Its Only Words
by greenstuff2
Summary: What happens when a face from the past reappears when her life is spiraling out of control and all her dreams have turned to dust ...
1. Chapter 1

_**A/N: The first step of the rest of her life … Hope you enjoy it and I would be really grateful if you could please review for me … Chapter two will be up-loaded tomorrow when much to her horror Molly starts to suspect that someone from her past is about to put in an appearance…..**_

-OG-

 _ **The World Has Lost Its Glory**_

 _ **7**_ _ **th**_ _ **April 2016 – Head Office**_

"And don't sleep with this one, okay?"

"I never, I mean, it never 'APPENED, I keep on telling you, shit, why don't anyone listen to me?"

"The wife, whatsername, Cindi Whatsits, said you did, so what am I supposed to do, hmm?"

He still wasn't meeting her eyes and it wasn't as if she wasn't well used to it, she was so used to it she could almost call herself a leading world expert on being bollocked, it was just that she'd thought it was all in the past now and that it would be different, that she'd finally found something she was really good at. But, no, trouble followed her around like a bad smell and this was no exception apparently.

Once again she'd found herself standing in front of someone who'd looked her up and down and pointed out her shortcomings, judged her and found her wanting. When she'd been bollocked in the past she'd had to accept most of what was said to her, because she knew that the things people said were true, she was definitely guilty of having an 'inappropriate' sense of humour, or of finding things bloody funny, and of sometimes saying too much, of letting her gob run away with her without making sure her brain was engaged first, but there weren't a word of truth in it this time and that really got to her, this criticism stung so badly because it was so unfair.

Her boss, Simon, very smooth, beautifully suited and booted and very pleased with himself, with his posh hairdo and bossy wife who was his P.A., was flipping through some of the tabloid press cuttings with his manicured finger nails and an exaggerated expression of deep distaste on his face. One of his minions, probably his bossy wife, had very thoughtfully cut them out of the papers and put them in a folder on his desk to make it easier for him to remind himself of what was in them, as Molly stood in front of him and _hated_ him, smug bastard. She hadn't laid a finger on the bloke whose face was staring up at her from the front page of the shit-sheet which people 'read' on tube trains and at breakfast tables, or even sitting on the bog, if they could read that is, or just looked at the pictures if they couldn't, but people always believed what was printed in them, didn't they? If it was in the paper it had to be true didn't it? Her Nan always believed it for one and up to a few days ago she wouldn't have dreamed of starting her day without her dose of the Daily Mail, she thought it was like the bible and that every word they printed was the plain god's honest truth. It had taken Molly what felt like forever to persuade her that it was not like that, that it had never happened, that they'd got it all wrong, so that Nan now kept on writing them shitty letters, which surprise, surprise they completely ignored.

Despite what the wife had said, Molly had had nothing to do with him, not like that anyway, she'd just been doing her job but no-one seemed to want to believe her. They preferred to believe some publicity hungry ex-soap actress who hadn't been in the headlines for a long time and who'd walked in when her brain addled wanker of an old man had decided that the temporary nanny was fair game for a bit of a grope.

It should have been the other way round, she should have been the one telling the press about being sexually harassed by some old bloke who used to be a household name a hundred years before and Simon should have been asking him what the actual fuck he'd thought he was doing, and supporting her instead of throwing a fit. But no, and now the wanker was enjoying an upsurge of fame, or whatever, since his wife had called the press accusing her of having the hots for him, in fact accusing her of having a bit of a dabble, at the same time as making sure that anyone and everyone who'd listen were told how she was the heartbroken grieving victim of some scheming little trollop who'd wanted to break up the happy home, to steal away her loving husband and loving father of their two kids.

"School holiday cover, just a couple, no, three weeks, one kid, boy, seven or eight I think" Simon shuffled some papers on his desk "I'll find it in a second, not sure that this is going to be a goer so no promises here, just go along and try and look like a bloody Nanny if you can and not some teenage slapper …. " Molly looked down at her jeans and sweat shirt which she'd thought were pretty standard knowing that anyone going out on the pull wouldn't be seen dead in them "They'll probably blow you out but you've got nothing to lose, we haven't got anything else at the moment, and it wouldn't be easy if we had, not with all this shit" He waved a languid hand at the press cuttings "Perhaps in a few months when the papers have moved onto some other poor sod …" He paused for effect and to let his words sink in, to let her know how grateful she should be "We all know people have got short memories, Molls, so just keep a dignified silence and don't say anything to anyone that'd drag the Agency into your crap again, KEEP AWAY FROM THE FUCKING VULTURES and wait for it all to die down, mind you it's going to be tricky" He pulled a sceptical face as though not even he believed what he was saying "Some people have a bit of a problem with live-in help …."

"I keep on telling you, Simon, I never did _nothing_ and it weren't me that talked to the papers, was it?" She swallowed hard "I did as you said, I kept me gob shut, not that it made any bleeding difference …"

Simon waved his hand dismissively, he had no interest in hearing it all again as Molly burned with the injustice, her life was once again totally fucked and really she'd had no idea that he'd been about to pounce on her the way he had. She'd believed all the cobblers that had been printed in magazines and Sunday supplements about the devoted family man with his actress wife who was still 'resting' two years after the birth of their second kid and about him cutting down on his commitments because of wanting to spend more time at home with the family. She'd been thrilled to get the job, even though it was only temporary, being Nanny to a couple of celebrities had seemed like all her dreams come true even if the money was fairly crap, she'd thought her East End accent would count against her, that she didn't sound posh enough for the celebrity jobs, but it hadn't taken her long to see that the house was more of a bloody war zone than a cosy family nest. Doors were constantly being slammed so bloody hard that the whole place shook, as 'call me Cindi' screamed abuse at him, at Eddie, at the top of her voice, all about his drinking and how fucking useless he was and how she couldn't bear the sight of him, and him then calling her an ARSEFUCK at the top of his voice, while their two children seemed oblivious to it.

So here she was, jobless and homeless with a reputation that was so far down the toilet that her boss seemed to think she was an unemployable slapper so that she was expecting to get the boot from the Agency at any second, something she could see was definitely going to happen sooner rather than later.

She was kicking herself for not seeing any sign that things around _her_ weren't as they should have been in that house in Highgate, but even now she couldn't pinpoint anything that would have led him to believe that she would welcome him suddenly grabbing hold the way he had and kissing her, his tongue halfway down her throat before she could stop him. His breath had smelt of stale fags and booze so that she'd wanted to gag, he was old enough to be her father and he had all the personal hygiene habits of her dad, armpits 'n all, and then Cindi had come busting in and started using language worthy of some drunk on their way home from a West Ham match. Neither of them had seemed to mind, or even notice, that their two little girls were sitting on the floor watching tele with their mouths hanging open, something that Molly had wanted to talk to them about, although obviously right then and there wasn't a good time.

Nan had snorted her derision when she'd found out that they were called Velvet and Silk, asking Molly caustically whether they were intending to call the next one Polyester or maybe even Nylon.

-OG-

After the hour of humiliation that had pretended it was going to be a strategy meeting with her boss, she was back on the bus looking out at the familiar streets that she thought she'd left behind. She was nearly twenty three and unless she came up with a plan like yesterday it was looking more and more likely that she'd soon be back at home permanently, living with Mum and Dad and all her brothers and sisters and a Nan who, even though she had her own place, might as well be living with them the amount of time she spent there. Not that Molly minded, she loved her Nan to bits and sometimes thought that she was the only one she could talk to because she was the only other one that wasn't a bleeding nut job. The bus turned the corner into the back streets behind Battersea Power Station and trundled along past the tattoo parlours and bookies and the sex shop with the blacked out windows, and then past the dodgy looking kebab place that used to be Carlo's, a place where she'd spent a hell of lot of very happy hours being the worst waitress in the world. She was suddenly swamped with nostalgia for all those evenings and weekends that she'd spent in that grotty little back street dive, it all seemed like a lifetime ago and looking back now she'd been happy then, even if she hadn't known it at the time.

It hadn't been exactly her first choice of career but she'd been lucky to get it and at the time her mum couldn't possibly have managed without the money it brought in, what with all the other little bleeders to feed and clothe, even if everything did come from the market. Her Nan had been a big help seeing as how she was an expert at bloody pilfering, but even so there were six of them and her mum had really struggled what with her dad being a total dickhead waste of space so that Belinda had kept on saying that he might as well be number seven.

She weren't a bad kid, not as such, not really, she didn't join a gang or go out on the rob or mug anyone or anything, but she'd wasted all the opportunities she'd had because she liked playing the clown at school, well when she was there she did, which to be honest wasn't a whole lot of the time, she couldn't always be arsed. Even when she was there she liked being, what did they call it? Disruptive. She'd worked out very early on that entertaining the rest made you popular, and being popular was something that was really important to her, much more important than anything else. She'd wanted to be one of the 'cool' kids, so she didn't bother about learning anything or passing exams or any stupid stuff like that, that was all just boring, as was paying attention to what anyone told her, so she'd bleached her hair a horrible brassy blonde and spent her days answering back, swearing 'n nipping off for a fag behind the gym block. She'd spent her lunchtimes swigging from a bottle of cider so that she was even more gobby in the afternoons, well, when she bothered to stay for the afternoon that was, more often than not she'd just bunk off. The teachers hadn't even pretended they were sorry when she left, they'd all waved goodbye with grins on their faces, just glad to see the back of her.

It didn't take long for her to wake up and see she was unemployable, she wanted to work with kids, maybe with kids who were a bit like her, but although she knew she couldn't do that straight off, it was still a bit of a shock to find that no-one in their right mind was going to give her a chance to do anything like that and that it was all her own fault. Doors didn't open for people like her, they slammed shut, she had nothing to offer, no skills, no qualifications, no references, well, except for the one from school that said about her attitude, no experience in anything useful and even though she was dead sorry, it was too bloody late and she couldn't go back and change it. She was sixteen, just out of school with nothing to do all day but hang about doing nothing with no money, no audience to egg her on and nothing to make her feel big and clever, nothing to look forward to except for being on benefits in some grotty flat, probably with too many kids on some sink estate somewhere.

This woman at the Job Centre had cared enough to save her life for her, had persuaded her to go to College to do all the stuff she should have done at school, and had shown her what to do and how to get on. Then, after two years of playing catch-up, she'd helped her get on a Childcare Course which had been hard bleeding work, but she'd stuck at it, she'd got her NVQ, and now everything she'd worked her arse off for had all gone to shit one morning in North London.

All those hours of study when her mates had been off getting pissed and having a good time, all that work experience when she'd learned how to deal with tantrums and how not to shudder at heads that were _alive_ with lice, how to change shitty bums and wet knickers without turning a hair and mopping up puddles and cleaning up puke, all for some wanker to decide that she was fair game. Everything now rested on whether or not someone else, who didn't know her and who might or might not have read a shit sheet about her, was going to judge her based on what they'd read and how she was dressed, and how bloody unfair was that?

-OG-


	2. Chapter 2

_**A/N: Thank you for your reviews – See you after the weekend for Chapter 3. I hope everyone has a lovely Bank holiday break and that it warms up a bit, it's bl**dy freezing in Sussex, have just lit the fire.**_

 _ **-OG-**_

 _ **Let's Start a Brand New Story**_

She spent most of the evening thanking a benevolent god for the invention of alcohol as she and Bella downed glass after glass of slightly horrible white wine while telling herself that it wasn't like it was Vodka or Tequila or anything, so it didn't really count. It might not have been what she called 'real' booze, but the upshot was still a splitting headache the following morning and a face that looked as if she'd slept in it, not to mention a queasy stomach that made the thought of a bus ride out to Dulwich Village a _really_ attractive prospect.

She'd made the terrible mistake of looking at the comments on-line, of looking at Twitter and Facebook, and had seen all these so-called friends she'd suddenly acquired, people had popped up that she hadn't seen or even thought about for donkeys but who were now pretending they cared deeply about how she was doing, whether she was coping. In fact what they really wanted were the gory _details_ of what it had been like to shag a rock legend, whether he was any good, as if she'd know for fuck sake. Then there was the other lot, the ones who didn't know her but thought it was okay to go on about what a slut she was, how common she was, about how she wasn't even pretty, the ones who'd called her the _poisoned dwarf_ after that actress whatever her name was and said as how she should be taken out and shot for trying to break up his happy marriage. The ones that thought that tarring and feathering would be too good for the likes of her and the one who'd started a petition to get her black-listed by every nanny agency in the world, let alone London, the one that had got all them _likes….._

She'd closed everything down straight away and wished that she'd thought about doing it sooner because she recognised that some of the photos that had been in the tabloids had come from her Facebook profile, but she'd been just so bloody upset when it had all kicked off that she hadn't been thinking straight. Re-printing photos from last year's holiday had made it look like she'd posed in her bikini with this big happy grin on her gob for the sodding tabloid press, which was the last thing she would have done, but it made her look like she was some sort of exhibitionist who was enjoying all the attention as well as being a total tart.

-OG-

A tedious bus journey out to Dulwich Village took her to another world, it was the first time she'd ever been there and Molly thought it was _beautiful,_ and way, way out of her league. Posh and expensive looking wasn't in it and no-one who lived in a place like that was going to take a chance on the tabloid press door-stepping them wanting to talk to _the nanny_ about her sex life for fuck sake. She wondered whether she might as well spare herself the humiliation of being shown the door and get back on a bloody bus straight off, she would of done if it wasn't for what Simon would say to her if she didn't show up for the interview.

It was two hours before she finally got on a bus home, the nearer she'd got to the address the more stubborn and determined she'd got, Nan was right, it wasn't like she'd done anything wrong so she had to stop behaving as if she had.

Rebecca seemed a really nice lady, a few years older than Molly she'd put her at her ease straight off and had been really friendly as they'd talked about the little boy, Sam, and how she needed or rather she wanted someone to be there to help out with taking care of him when he was stopping with his dad for a couple of weeks because the dad wasn't long out of hospital and she was worried about him coping. Molly wondered for a moment whether or not she should ask for a bit more information, shit, she wasn't a nurse for fuck sake, what if the dad needed someone to take care of him?

Rebecca was so nice that Molly let it go, she was such a nice lady that she would say if that was the case, and not only was she really lovely, but she looked lovely as well. She was so soft spoken and posh, all shiny hair with manicured nails and her make-up was beautiful, if she was even wearing any cos you couldn't tell and she smelt expensive. She was also bloody wearing the sort of casual clothes that made Molly bitterly regret her own choice of outfit. Simon had said to dress like a nanny so she'd picked something that covered her tattoos and was as close to Mary Poppins as she could get, an outfit that had made Bella look her up and down and hoot with laughter as she asked whether she was going for a job as a prison guard, or was she just wanting to scare the shit out of the kid to make him do what he was told? Even her mum had looked at her a bit funny and asked her whether she was sure ….. .

The little boy wasn't there, he was a day boarder at some boarding school somewhere and Molly wasn't even sure what one of them was but didn't want to display her ignorance, she'd google it when she got home. Rebecca was so nice to her that Molly begun to feel awful that she was sort of deceiving her by not telling her any of the crap that had gone on. She wasn't comfortable keeping it secret and was afraid that they were bound to find out sooner or later and would then be bloody furious that she hadn't said, but before she could pluck up courage to put the kibosh on their cosy chat, Rebecca brought the subject up herself, saying she knew what had been in the papers, that Simon had filled her in on the details.

Molly made a mental note to ring him when she got out of there and say 'thanks a bleeding bunch mate' but kept her mouth shut, she couldn't be sure what he'd said, especially when Rebecca went on to say that it really didn't make that much difference and that you couldn't always believe what was in the gutter press anyway, and that they weren't famous so no-one would care, especially as they weren't even married any more. Molly did a quick revision of her opinion of Simon, and decided that maybe he wasn't such a fucker after all.

Rebecca finished by saying that she would ring him and confirm the details and Molly wanted to jump up and hug her as the other woman vanished to answer a phone ringing off the hook somewhere and she sat and waited in the sitting room with its gorgeous big soft white sofas, her feet on the blue and white Chinese rug and tears of relief prickled at the back of her eyes. She was trying her best not to listen as Rebecca was obviously having a difference of opinion with someone, an argument which was being conducted in a very low voice and which seemed to be taking a bleeding long time with lots of silences so that Molly wondered whether she should get up and close the door, give the woman a bit of privacy which she did and then started looking round the room, something she'd been too wound up to do before. She wandered over to look at all the photos on the window sill, wondering whether Rebecca would mind if she took a bit of a look, and decided it would be okay.

All of them seemed to be of a little boy with a lively smile, obviously Sam, but there was one in particular that made Molly wish she had a magnifying glass with her. It was a snap, in a large frame full of a mix of little snaps, mostly obviously taken on holidays, but this was of a tall man with dark hair wearing army uniform and standing a long way from the camera as he laughed with Sam, a man whose face looked familiar, even though the photograph was titchy and he was a long way off. She looked through all the rest of them to see if there was any more with him in them, but there weren't and it was one of those annoying things that happen sometimes when you see someone whose face you sort of recognise but you can't think where from, like when you see the bloke from the corner shop on the tube and can't place him. You know you know him, but ….. and then ….. and it was enough to give her a small shitfit. She could only hope that the world wasn't that small and that this bloke only looked a little bit like him, anyhow he didn't have to be the ex did he? He might be a family friend or a relative or something, anything, and that was if it was even him and she wasn't a bit sure.

-OG-

Memories of those days at Carlo's came flooding back as she sat on the bus going home, it all seemed so bloody long ago, well it was, it was at least two years, a bit more, and everything had changed since then. Carlo's had long gone and for the first time in ages she wondered a bit about what had happened to the others and made a resolution to find out, well, maybe not Piotr and the other cretin, they were most probably in Wormwood Scrubs or been deported or something, but Sandy, she would definitely check on her once she got back on Facebook, whenever that was….. .

She started smiling and even snorted the odd giggle as she on the bus and remembered …. .

 _ **Saturday 6**_ _ **th**_ _ **August 2013 – Carlo's**_

"You would, wouldn't you?"

"Nah, course not, don't know him do I?"

"Yeah you would, I can see from your face"

"Well, be rude not to really, wouldn't it?"

Sandy grinned, then sniggered and had then given out one of her full volume cackles so that the punters had all looked over towards where they were standing, "taking a break" as they put it, in other words leaning up against the wall behind the counter and ignoring sticky table tops that needed clearing and swiping with a damp cloth, actions that passed for cleaning in Carlo's. At the time she could have done without Sandy laughing like that because he'd looked over and smiled and it was him they was actually talking about, so that all she could hope was that he hadn't heard what they were saying otherwise it would have been a bit embarrassing to say the least.

He was one of her favourites coming in as he did regular as clockwork every other Saturday for his breakfast, always at the same time and always on his own. He'd just sit there and eat whatever the two cretins in the kitchen served up and he would never try and have a conversation with her or anything, just read the Telegraph, but he'd always be polite, say "Good Morning" and "Goodbye" in this very nice posh way he had and he'd always smile at her when he came in and when he went as well as leaving a tip, which she and Sandy thought was a bit of bleeding miracle in the circumstances.

"Usual?"

She'd smile and yell his order through the hatch to the two Polish chefs out the back in the kitchen, neither of whom could speak more than the odd word of English, except for their incredible repertoire of what her tutor called profanity so she had to change the order to a number 4 rather than a full English with scrambled, or what passed for scrambled eggs once they've finished fucking them up. They were totally and unbelievably inept for people who were supposed to be professionals although Sandy reckoned that in their case it just meant that they were cheap.

"And cook them bleeding eggs properly"

She knew that they probably wouldn't understand a word of that or that they'd pretend not to, so that she'd have to go in the kitchen and show them what she was talking about, but they were a pair of serial 'gropers' so that she and Sandy avoided getting anywhere near them if they could help it.

She smiled as she remembered the time when the scrambled eggs had been like yellow rat droppings, hard little pellets so that he'd looked at them for a very long time and had pushed them around with his knife for a bit before sensibly pushing them to one side of the plate and leaving them, and the time when they'd been almost raw, still slimy with uncooked egg white, so that he'd have been risking salmonella by putting them anywhere near his mouth, let alone eating them, which he hadn't. It had become like a game they played each time he came in. He'd order the eggs, they'd cook them and she'd serve them at which point he'd look at them, push them around a bit then look at her and raise his eyebrows, then look at them again and bite his bottom lip, laugh and leave them, but he'd still come in every second Saturday and sit there and read his paper and check his watch every so often as though he was waiting for something, or maybe someone.

Once the rush was over, or at least once the customers had obligingly pissed off and they had the place to themselves, well, except for her favourite and they actually didn't mind him because of him being what passed for a regular, it was the best bit of the morning because it meant it was time for their official tea break as opposed to their 'leaning up against the wall resting their feet' break. Cups of tea and slices of cheesecake, the one that was bought in otherwise they wouldn't have touched it with a bargepole. Two slices of it that had, _allegedly,_ fallen on the floor so that it had, again _allegedly,_ become totally unsuitable for serving up to members of the paying public. Sandy would often say as how it was funny how that kept on happening time after time no matter how _careful_ they were.

Molly had offered him a bit once, well, she couldn't see any harm in being nice no matter what Sandy said, but he just shook his head and smiled, so that she and Sandy had looked at each other and pretended to bite the backs of their knuckles as they'd smirked because holy shit, he really had got a nice smile. He'd checked his watch again and pretended not to see what they were doing as he got up, still smiling and said goodbye and left but it didn't matter how hard she'd tried she could never see where he went and she hadn't wanted to go to the window to be blatantly nosy because Sandy would never have let her live it down.

-OG-

It had been 2013 the last time she'd seen him, she remembered that it had been starting to get chilly outside so it must have been October or November and she wondered if he remembered it as clearly as she did, God she hoped not ….. .


	3. Chapter 3

_**I'm Here If You Should Call to Me**_

She'd always looked like shit on those far off Saturdays, her hair had usually needed a bit of a wash because she always stayed in bed till the very last minute and then she'd had to drag herself about the place yawning till her eyes watered and looking like some hung over teenager who couldn't be arsed to do anything, but it wasn't that, chance would have been a fine thing, it was that she was always dead weary by Saturday. She worked every evening of the week as well as going to College full-time and on top of that she always had all this study stuff to get through, assignments that had to be in on time and there was never any time to do any of it except for in the early hours once she'd got home from Carlo's. That meant by the time the weekends came round she was thoroughly bleeding knackered, had these dreadful black rings round her eyes which make-up didn't cover and she couldn't afford the expensive stuff to do a better job. She almost invariably fell asleep on the bus going home on a Saturday.

Sandy would keep on and on about how she shouldn't be so nice to him as if it particularly got up her nose, so much so that at one point Molly had suspected that Sandy actually fancied him something rotten, except of course that she was far too old for him. She'd rabbit on and on and then complain that Molly wasn't listening because of her yawning the whole time, but Sandy would keep on sayin' how he was such a mystery. A good looking bloke like him, young and well-dressed with a really nice smile, someone who read a proper paper like the Telegraph, didn't just look at the pictures neither, someone who was polite and well-spoken so that they'd called him Mr P. short for Mr Posh, all of that made him stick out like a sore thumb from the other customers in a dump like Carlo's.

Sandy was convinced that he did something in the City because someone with nice clean hands and shoes like his couldn't be a workman or anything, she used to say 'you can always tell' but Molly hadn't been so sure. She'd agreed that he probably wasn't a workman, he was far too posh for that, but kept on arguing that if he'd had a half way decent job he'd be able to afford to eat somewhere they didn't try and poison him, where they knew how to cook scrambled eggs. She'd thought maybe he was a debt collector or something, and she remembered Sandy saying that if he was he was probably bleeding good at getting women to pay up, that he could just turn up and smile at them and maybe chat them up a bit and there you go. She'd added that on the other hand if he was collecting money from her she'd only pay up one week at a time, because that meant he'd have to keep going back over and over.

In the end they decided that he was most likely a salesman of some sort, because he always smiled and said 'hello', although not second hand cars because he didn't look like Arthur Daley and they hadn't seen him wear a dodgy hat or tap the side of his nose and wink when he told them stuff, not that he told them much, well, nothing at all really. The thought of that hat had sent them both into fits of giggles as Sandy had said as how he obviously liked slumming because he always smiled at Molly, who pretended to be offended and then reminded her that Piotr in the kitchen always smiled and said 'hello' to her as well. Sandy had pointed out that Piotr was a moron who thought it would help his chances of getting his leg over, which Mr. P obviously wasn't, well not if looks were anything to go by and she thought that on the whole they were, especially looks like his. They'd both fallen about laughing when she'd declared that he was a gentleman as well, she'd never once had to go in the bog and spray air freshener around when he'd in for his breakfast.

Never once in all those hours of happy gossip about him and what his job was had either of them ever come up with the idea that he might be a soldier, that he could be in the army, they'd never even found out what his real name was, they'd never asked, which was no bleeding help at all to her now. They'd definitely had him down as maybe an estate agent or even flogging something a bit dodgy that needed a posh front man as Sandy reckoned he could persuade her to buy just about anything, whether it was legal or not, which had made them both snigger. What the hell would he have been doing in there if he was a soldier anyway? and he'd never turned up wearing that army camouflage stuff had he?

As she sat on the bus going home Molly couldn't stop her mind from running over and over that last time she'd seen him, if it was him and she still couldn't be sure.

It was cold outside that day and it had rained so that the pavements were all wet and slimy and the windows were all steamed up when he'd come barrelling into the kitchen and told Piotr to take his fucking hands off her. He'd stood there just inside the door with his arms crossed across his chest, hands tucked under his armpits looking _menacing_ and so much taller than the little Polish prick who'd been smoking something that definitely wasn't Benson & Hedges so that he'd grabbed her and started to maul her about. His side kick and Molly couldn't for the life of her remember what his name was now, had been egging him on and had then stood in the way to stop her getting out. She'd started yelling because she'd begun to get a little bit bothered, Piotr might have been titchy, but he was a hell of a lot stronger than he looked and he was taking no bleeding notice of her shouting and yelling and anyway he was high as a kite. Kicking at his shins and trying to hurt him hadn't done anything and hard as she'd tried she couldn't get her knee up to where she needed to get it.

Sandy had been stood in the doorway yelling at the top of her voice that she'd called the bloody coppers and that they'd be there any minute and that he had to pack it in immediately while the rest of the punters had just got on with eating their breakfasts and looking the other way or hiding behind their papers, they were all making it plain that it was nothing to do with them, wankers.

Piotr had taken one look at Mr. P. who'd looked like he meant business even though he never threatened to hit the little prick or nothing, and had then muttered something long and evil-sounding in Polish before he'd let her go. He'd glared back over his shoulder and gave him a look that was full of evils but Mr. P. had taken no bloody notice at all, had just stood there with this dead pan expression on his face and _looked_ so that the little knob had gone back to ruining food. Molly had been able to say thanks and get out of the kitchen just as the coppers pitched up so that Mr P had raised his eyebrows and said something about everything being under control now. But the coppers hadn't been happy about something to do with him, about who he was or something, that he hadn't got his driving license on him or whatever, but then they went and got completely the wrong end of the bloody stick and frog marched him off out to sit in the back of their bloody car while they asked him some questions and checked him out.

The rest of the so-called witnesses in the place hadn't seen nothing apparently, there's a surprise, and it had taken all the faintly hysterically garbled explanations of both her and Sandy to get the police to see that they were making a bloody huge mistake. They kept telling the coppers that they'd got completely the wrong bloke so that after what felt like several lifetimes, they'd eventually let Mr P go and had hoicked Piotr out of the kitchen and off to the station for a bit of a chat. She'd gone out in the rain to where Mr. P was stood on the pavement to tell him how sorry she was and to thank him for helping and he'd looked at her with his eyebrows raised and said that maybe she should keep out of Piotr's way in future. Molly remembered how she'd felt like some stupid schoolgirl and how she'd squirmed but then he'd sort of nodded his head and said that he wasn't going be able to come in for a little while but he'd maybe see them in a few months. She hadn't been sure what to believe, but thought it was odds on that he was intending to give them a swerve because of what had happened.

Sandy had poo-pooed that, saying that blokes like him liked being heroes and had translated it as him being off for a spell as a guest in Ford Open which was why the coppers had been so interested in him, which Molly was now ashamed to remember had made them both giggle …. a lot. Where the fuck that idea had come from she hadn't got a clue now, but it had seemed to make perfect sense at the time.

If she was being honest she hadn't really given him a lot of thought since that day. Piotr had returned to work with a chastened expression on his face and had kept his hands strictly to himself, so it looked likely the coppers had put the fear of God up him. She'd also made bloody sure she kept well out of his way after that, had given him a very wide berth because she knew that it had been partly her fault what had happened, she'd been very tired and had got careless that morning.

Mr P had disappeared off of her radar; he hadn't been in again before things had moved on. Carlo, whoever the fuck he was, had sold Carlo's so that they were all out of a job for a bit, and then she'd got some weekend shifts at McDonald's and some late nights stacking shelves at Asda and had eventually forgotten all about her time at the café and Mr. P, except for the odd moment when she'd wondered how Sandy was getting on.

That was until she'd seen that bloody photograph and with hindsight she was now wondering whether, if it was him and she was horribly afraid it was, that he'd actually thought she'd been asking for it, that she'd been messing with Piotr and leading him on. Shit, it hadn't occurred to her until just now, but it was bad enough for the temporary nanny to be branded a scheming little chancer, a trollop who couldn't keep her knickers on or her hands off the boss, without him thinking she was an imposter. That in real life she was a terrible waitress from a shitty back street café who'd almost got him arrested when he'd rescued her from some smack head with rape on his mind, and that she'd got a track record for being some sort of prick-tease who made a habit of leading blokes on.

-OG-

If she'd been thinking straight she would have realised that he didn't live in that gorgeous house in Dulwich Village, that was _her_ house, Rebecca's, with all them lovely light colours and the white furniture and rugs it obviously weren't a bloke's house, actually it didn't even look much like a kid lived there, so she wouldn't be stopping there while she looked after him. Anyhow, the ex would most likely have to live near some army base somewhere, so that when Simon said as how she was going to be working in a village near Amesbury she managed not to say that she'd never even heard of it and was it on the Central line?

She'd googled it and had seen all the bleeding trees, which she hated. She always told people that they gave her the willies but that wasn't strictly true, she didn't mind the trees as such, it was just that she'd always thought the countryside was for people who had nothing else to do. It had no Starbucks, not even a Costa, well not that she knew of anyhow, and no Top Shop or anything, so what the fuck did people do there all the time, except for going to look at some ancient stones or some'ing, and you could only do that a few times before it got boring couldn't you?

-OG-

The little boy Sam started out by being very shy around her, he hadn't really looked at her properly, had just glanced up then looked at his feet when his mum had introduced them at her house, but by the time they got in the car to drive down to his dad's he was chattering away nineteen to the dozen and laughing at her jokes as well as telling her that she was funny. She only hoped that his dad was going to be as easily impressed as well as hoping that with a bit of luck he would have had a bang on the head, not bad enough to send him schitzoid or nothing but bad enough that he would be suffering from a nasty bout of amnesia otherwise this looked like being an even shorter placement than Highgate.

There had been one or two little comments that Rebecca had made which had told Molly that the dad wasn't exactly over keen on the idea of a nanny anyhow…. let alone if it turned out that he knew her. Then there were all these alarm bells going off in her head when Rebecca started saying something about how reassuring it was that Sam was going to be in such good hands, how it would really put her mind at rest while she was away on her holidays with her boyfriend in the States. She'd insisted that Molly made a note of the boyfriend's number as well as hers, just in case hers wasn't working for some reason, and had then kept on saying how she could ring at any time if she was worried, day or night, so that Molly began to wonder what the fuck was wrong with the dad. She still hadn't got around to asking Rebecca why he'd been in hospital, but he was Sam's dad wasn't he? If there was anything to worry about surely his mum would say, wouldn't she?

She was beginning to worry that this was going to turn out to be a case of out of the frying pan into the fire for her, maybe a different sort of fire, and actually a different sort of frying pan as well, but still she wasn't sure that it was looking that good …. .

-OG-

A/N: Thank you for your reading and reviewing, Chapter 4 tomorrow (hopefully).


	4. Chapter 4

Amesbury was just what she'd expected, which was hardly surprising seeing as how she'd spent hours looking at the pictures of the place on-line. The nearer they got to his dad's house the more excited Sam got and he began to point out all sorts of stuff to her, telling her all about how Stonehenge was just down the road a bit and asking her if she'd ever been and when she shook her head saying how he, Sam, was going to take her there to show her, well he and his dad, obviously. Molly was beginning to be afraid that the little boy was going to be badly disappointed when his dad took one look and told her to piss off back to London.

The moment of truth was put off for a bit when they got there because even though Sammie whined and grizzled a bit, well quite a lot really, Rebecca took no notice, just told him to take Molly round the back and show her the garden and his climbing frame and stuff while she found his dad. He was still pulling a huffy face but he was essentially an obedient kid, Molly would have hated to see how the little bleeders would have reacted, so he'd done as he was told, had taken her by the hand and dragged her round the back of this cottage in a place called Archer's Gate. Rebecca seemed to have a key so she let herself into the house and then started arguing with someone who was out of sight, someone whose voice was horribly familiar to Molly, or at least she thought it was.

"DADDY"

Sammie shrieked with delight as he went tearing hell for leather up the lawn to be swung up in the air by the tall bloke waiting with his arms open wide, and it was, it definitely was, as she'd been afraid it was all along, the figure she'd last seen getting out of the back of a police car outside a shitty café round the back of Battersea Power Station, something that was known as sod's law where she came from. He nodded politely at her, muttering 'hello' fortunately without even the tiniest hint of recognition on his face as Sam carried on yelling at the top of his voice, full of excitement "DADDY, THIS IS MOLLY, SHE'S FUNNY AND SHE'S GOING TO TO STAY WITH US"

"Right" He nodded at her "Molly" then put Sam down and turned him round so that his son's back was leaning against him, his arms round the little boy, hugging him close "We'll see, Scamp"

"I'M GOING TO TAKE HER TO STONEHENGE, SHE'S NEVER BEEN"

"I said, we'll see, Scamp"

Molly gave him a weak smile; this was going well, really well.

-OG-

She couldn't help thinking that there was a hell of a lot of fart-arsing about for someone who'd refused all offers of tea or coffee, even water and who definitely hadn't wanted any food as Rebecca got ready to push off back to London. She concentrated all her efforts instead on issuing strings of instructions at Sam, and his father, but strangely didn't address any of it directly at Molly, in fact didn't look at her or bother to speak to her now that they were here. Loads of 'do this' and 'don't do that' mainly 'don't do that' as far as Molly could tell so that she wondered why the fuck Mrs Control Freak didn't just piss off and let them get on with it, he was Sam's dad after all, he wasn't going to let the kid do anything dangerous or stupid.

As for her, she just stood there with this imbecile on day release grin on her face feeling like a total spare part and not a bit sure where she was supposed to fit into any of this. One thing at least, he hadn't seemed to have recognised her, although she was still a bit afraid that it was just a matter of time before his memory kicked in.

There was a prolonged and deafening silence in the room when Rebecca finally drove off and Sam and his father came back in from where the little boy had been waving goodbye and Molly wished more than anything she could think of something clever or sensible to say, Sam seemed oblivious to any tensions or atmospheres as he started running in and out of rooms and yelling with delight when he found forgotten treasures. His little face was a picture and he was practically holding his breath as he started to rip the paper off a parcel his dad produced from the cupboard under the stairs and Molly saw the same look mirrored on Mr P's face before he noticed her looking at him and the shutters closed over shutting her out.

"I'm sorry … Sir …. I don't know what else to call you" His head had shot up together with his eyebrows in a sort of question at her use of the word 'Sir' but Rebecca hadn't introduced him and she couldn't call him Mr P or Sam's dad, as she made a very quick decision "But I think I'd better go"

She'd got no idea how she was going to get back to London, even whether there was a main line station anywhere nearby, but presumably she could get a taxi to the nearest bit of civilisation and the driver could stop at a cash point before they got there because she probably hadn't got enough on her to pay for it. She had the urge to giggle as the thought crossed her mind that maybe she could ask Mr P for a bit of a loan.

"My name's Charles and I'm sorry I know that this is difficult, but it must be obvious to you that I had no wish to employ someone, anyone, to help me with Sam, but Sammie is going to be very disappointed if you leave straight away …..so I suggest that you stay tonight or maybe even for a day or two, let Sammie take you to Stonehenge, anyway Rebecca will only find someone else to inflict on us if you go before she goes on holiday"

"Sorry, I didn't know I was being _inflicted_ on you" The word had really stung, this was _horrible_ "I didn't know there was a problem, your wife was lovely to me when I met her in town, she told me that you was just out of hospital and that you needed help, that's all, she never told me about any of this so I had no idea that there was any sort of" She shrugged her shoulders "R _ow_ going on about me being here, so it would probably be best if I go" She couldn't help sounding hurt because she was, very.

He rubbed his hand through the hair on the back of his neck and dredged up a little smile, well the corners of his mouth twitched upwards, it wasn't a smile as such and it went nowhere near his eyes as he moved his head slowly from side to side, telling Sam to wait just a second and he'd help him with the Lego, the bits of pirate ship were in imminent danger of ending up all over the floor.

"I'm sure she was nice, Rebecca is always extremely nice when she's getting her own way and _inflict_ was a ….. poor…. choice of word, sorry" He snorted a derisive laugh down his nose and shook his head "I've been out of hospital for quite some time so I think I can probably manage, it's just that she likes to exert her control over us, Sam and me" He moved to sit down next to the little boy, picking up the instruction booklet "Oh and by the way, she's not my wife anymore"

Molly moved to pick up her bag and put it with Sammie's ready to take up when she found out where she was sleeping, probably in the garden shed with the tools and the spiders, but one night wouldn't kill her and she could get herself off home the next day. It did cross her mind to ask him why he didn't just tell Rebecca to fuck right off. She couldn't of course, well, not using that sort of language anyway and it most likely wasn't a conversation to have in front of a kid who'd probably got bat radar for ears, and anyhow it was another thing that was definitely none of her business.

She'd got no idea what sort of shit was going on here or what had gone on when they'd separated but if there was one thing was certain, she was never again going to get involved in someone else's domestic, that was not going to happen …. ever.

-OG-

It had been the early hours before she'd finally managed to drop off, because it was turning out to be even worse than her worst nightmare and that was in spite of it being so bleeding _quiet_ and dark, she'd decided sometime around midnight that she needed traffic and sirens to be able to sleep. The day before had been long and tedious and the evening had been endless even though she'd gone to bed before 9.00, but that wasn't because he was horrible to her or anything, he wasn't, he was perfectly civil, she just felt _inflicted._

She'd played endless games of snap and happy families with Sam and then noughts and crosses while Charles had cooked because he'd insisted that she was a 'guest', but she thought that if she stayed, even for a couple of days, she'd have had to try and take over otherwise she was going to be on a sort of crash diet until she got home. The worst bit had come when it was time for Sam to go to bed, she'd offered to see to his bath and been turned down, had offered to see him into bed, and been turned down, had started to pick up his stuff and sort his dirty clothes and been told to leave them so that she'd washed up the supper dishes while he was reading Sam a story and wished herself a million miles away.

He offered to put the television on for her while he sat in a chair and buried himself behind a big thick boring looking book which she wouldn't mind betting had no plot, nor any pictures. She'd declined his offer but as he couldn't have made it plainer if he'd tried that having a chat was out the bleeding question she took herself off to bed, which turned out to be a single spare room and not the shed, as soon as she reasonably could and started to plan her escape. Even if she had to walk to the station and even though she'd be jobless and homeless again, there was no way on earth that she was staying for more than one night and two days was obviously completely out the bloody question. As for him, he might be good looking, her memory, which was obviously better than his, hadn't played any tricks on her as far as that was concerned, he was just as attractive now as he had been then, but the miserable bastard deserved to be bleeding lonely and to have a bossy cow of an ex-wife giving him verbals all the time ….

-OG-

He was missing when she got up next morning, according to Sam he'd gone out for a run which he did every morning and on the way back he was going to go to the local shop for bread and a newspaper so that Molly was exceedingly grateful for small mercies when she ventured downstairs for a desperately needed cuppa and a bowl of the coco-pops she'd brought with her. As far as she was concerned healthy eating did not and never would include the giving up of her bowl of chocolate cereal, that was sacrosanct.

She did her best to persuade Sam to have one of the healthy option cereals that were staring at her accusingly from the cupboard but in the end she succumbed to the pleading expression in a pair of big brown eyes that were staring longingly at her bowl of cereal, something that was not going to please his father one little bit when Sam told him what he'd had for breakfast. She gave the little boy a bowl of the cereal, much to his delight, and rationalised that it served his miserable so-and-so of a dad right, that he already thought she'd been inflicted on him and as she was off in an hour or so, it didn't really matter what sort of nanny he thought she was, a bit of tooth rotting sugar and empty calories, well, what else could he expect?

"Sam, what would you like for breakfast?"

He had his back to them as he stood in his sweat soaked 'T' shirt and looked at the array of healthy cereals that Molly had already dismissed in favour of a bowl of chocolate covered crap.

"I've already had mine Daddy, Molly gave me some of hers" Sam looked up at his father and grinned widely with a chocolate coloured milky moustache where he'd upended his bowl to savour every last drop of the contents before putting it in the sink "It was d'licious, I'd like to have that for breakfast every day"

"Yeah, I'm sure" Charles' voice was full of amusement as he looked at Molly's bowl of cereal, then picked up a spoon and dipped it in, laughing out loud at the expression on Sam's face "Ummm, coco-pops, haven't had those for ages, I'd forgotten how good they are" He looked up and laughed again at the shocked expressions on both faces that were staring at him as she wondered what had gone on to put Captain Miserable Arse James back in his box during the night or maybe when he was out on his run. She badly wanted to snigger, in her experience the only thing that put blokes in that sort of mood was sex, and she couldn't think how he'd found time to nip to some girlfriend's house, do the business and still have time to get the bread "Don't tell your mother Sam"

"Listen, Molly" He rubbed his hand through the curls on the back of his neck, something he seemed to do a lot as far as she could tell although she couldn't remember if he used to do it back then, as she struggled hard to compose herself and he fiddled around with a coffee machine before raising his eyebrows in a mute enquiry as to whether she wanted one "I know that this is very difficult for you, I've done a lot of thinking and none of this bloody _nonsense_ is of your making, so" He smiled that smile that used to make Sandy go weak at the knees and say he could sell her anything "What I suggest is that we call a truce, just for a couple of days, then we can see about getting you home, what do you say?"

"Okay"

She declined the offer of coffee by lifting her own mug of tea and shrugging her shoulders. There was actually no point in saying anything else, she would have felt a whole lot better if he'd apologised, said how sorry he was, had maybe even done a bit of grovelling, but somehow she had the feeling that that was extremely unlikely and anyhow she hadn't been looking forward to going running back to London with her tail between her legs …..… facing Simon and telling him that it had all gone tits up …. again. One good thing was that he'd obviously forgotten ….

-OG-

 _ **A/N: Glad some of you are enjoying this, please review for me if you can. Will try and update tomorrow, but have a lovely trip to the dentist to look forward to, he is going to completely re-do my pesky crown with all the joys of an impression to look forward to, so may have to take to my bed when I get back. I am the biggest coward in the world when it comes to having an impression done and my credit card may well feel the pain as well !**_


	5. Chapter 5

_**A Smile Can Bring you Near to Me**_

Sleep had been elusive for Charles the night before as well, the early hours had found him lying awake and silently fuming with Rebecca for doing her best to prolong a war that was over, well it was over as far as he was concerned. This time she had gone too far, had tried to interfere with his precious time with Sam so that he was going to have to have it out with her, well as soon as Sammie had gone back to school. He was determined that nothing was going to get in the way of them enjoying this time together, especially not giving Rebecca a spurious excuse for turning up and taking him back to London. She knew he wouldn't put up a fight in front of Sam.

He was also dredging his memory banks for an explanation as to why the pretty little girl with the green eyes and dark hair was so incredibly familiar; he'd thought at first that she was some friend of Rebecca's that he vaguely remembered, someone who was there to report back, but that idea had melted away just as soon as she'd opened her mouth and spoken, nope, definitely not a pal of his ex-wife.

There was always the possibility that she was ex-army, a squaddie he'd met somewhere but that didn't ring any bells for him either. The moment of recognition arrived as a bolt from the blue when he'd been getting ready to pound the streets, he'd thought, he supposed, that it was fairly useful to have someone in the house so that he could go out for a run, then memory had hit him full square in the face. Standing on a wet pavement in a dreary London back street with a small green-eyed girl falling over herself saying how sorry she was, a girl they'd called Molls, a girl who seemed to have completely forgotten all about him now.

He decided that on the whole a few days wouldn't kill him and then he'd arrange for her to go home after Sam's trip to Stonehenge, he didn't want anything to upset his son and sending Molly straight home would do that without a doubt.

-OG-

The two of them had disappeared off to Bath so that Sam could spend the day with his Nana and Grandpop and Molly wondered yet again why Rebecca had got her there, the grandparents would surely have been able to plug any gaps. She'd obviously lied about whether or not he was fit enough to look after Sam; Molly had so far done nothing that could even be vaguely described as work. She'd played board games and card games, helped Sam build Lego, played I Spy, and done 'running races' with him in the garden as well as playing a sort of tennis, and had spent an hour making a huge chocolatey mess of the kitchen when the two of them had produced Rice Krispie cakes. She'd watched a hell of a lot of daytime tele whenever Sam and his dad were doing something together which didn't include her, but Charles still wouldn't let her do the cooking, although she'd done the dishes most evenings when he'd been upstairs with Sam. He also didn't seem inclined to include her in much of anything else, which was up to him of course, but it certainly wasn't what she thought it would be when she'd been doing her training.

She had no intentions of going anywhere near any grandparents or Bath, had told them firmly that she would see them later and that she would go shopping or something and had waved goodbye with a sigh of relief. She'd had more than enough awkward meetings in the last few weeks without doing any she didn't have to and the thought of spending hours sitting in a car with a companion who was very polite but also very reluctant and as moody as fuck was a treat she could quite easily do without.

-OG-

"Something smells good"

He sniffed the air like a kid then grinned, which was a surprise in itself, he was obviously in a far better mood than he had been when he'd left that morning. She'd meant to ask Sam what his favourite dinner was and had forgotten, so she'd worked on the principle that all little boys regardless of their age like sausage and mash with onion gravy so that Sam had hugged her when she'd told him what the smell was, his little face wreathed in smiles. He'd run out in the garden to burn off some of his sitting in the car for hours excess energy by hanging upside down from his climbing frame while he waited to be fed with what he declared was 'his very most favourite bestest' dinner, a statement that made his father grimace and comment that he was glad they weren't wasting their money on his school fees.

"You didn't have to do all this" Charles perched his bum on the edge of the kitchen table and looked at the pile of ironing sitting there neatly folded on the chair. She'd changed the beds and washed and ironed the bedding, avoided the temptation of having a bit of a snoop round his room and had given the place a clean and polish, more out of sheer boredom than anything else, as well as cooking the dinner that was on the hob "You don't have to try this hard"

"S'okay, I was bored and had nothing else to do anyhow"

She didn't want him to run away with the idea that she'd done it to get in his good books because that was a long way from the truth, but she did feel bad that she was being paid to sit around doing bugger all.

He bit his bottom lip and put his head on one side giving her a beseeching look which would have been far more effective if his eyes hadn't been crinkling up and dancing as though something was really amusing "Do I get the feeling that you might have got the hump with me?"

"Nah, why would I? Well, alright, not the hump exactly, but yeah I s'pose I am a bit …"

Their conversation was abruptly curtailed by Sam bouncing back into the kitchen with an extremely 'hard done by' expression on his face as he rubbed his hand on his stomach and begged in the most pathetic little voice he could muster for someone to _please_ tell him when his dinner was going to be ready because he was _starving_ to death.

"Better go and wash your hands then" Charles laughed "Must say I agree with you, Scamp, I think it's very cruel to make us wait like this, still if you really _can't_ wait, we can always ask Molly to cook some scrambled eggs"

Sam's face turned into a horrified mask of dismay, it fell a mile with outraged disappointment at the prospect of missing out on the promised sausages.

"But Daddy, I don't like strangled eggs"

Molly swallowed hard before giving him an agonised look, her own face was a mask of dismay as she turned back to speak to Sam "It's okay, Sammie, your dad's just joking"

"Yup, have to agree with you there; those eggs were definitely a joke"

" _ **I**_ didn't cook 'em, don't blame me, and I thought you'd forgot" She turned her still horrified face towards him "How long have you known?"

"Well I knew I knew the face when you got here"

He was finding something hilariously funny as he smirked at her, and chewed at his bottom lip trying hard to control his grin before putting his head back and bursting into a peal of laughter at the consternation on her face "Molly, stop looking like that, I've been in the army for years and we're trained to be observant, of course I recognised you, it's not important is it?"

Since that moment of recall, he'd kept thinking how different she looked these days, oh it was the same girl, he was bloody sure of that, but she'd lost that smile she'd always had for him back then and was now very neat looking, hair tied back in a plait not swinging free and curly down her back like it used to, and she seemed to have completely lost that cheekiness, that propensity to make smartass comments that she'd had back then. He'd been totally convinced that she'd forgotten him.

"Why didn't you say some'ing then?"

"Why didn't you?"

"I dunno, I just …. didn't"

"Ditto"

He stopped laughing and winked, a smirk still on his face as a very doubtful looking Sam looked from one to the other; still unsure as he tried to work out whether she was telling the truth …. .

"Tell you what, carry on like that and _you_ won't get any, Sammie can have your share"

She put on a mock stern face and voice as she wagged her index finger so that a reassured Sam charged off towards the bathroom shouting 'don't give him any Molly' and the two of them smiled at each other, enjoying the moment but she had been about to say that she thought it might be time for her to think about getting off home, that she was a bit pissed off with feeling like a spare part.

It crossed her mind now to wonder what else he knew about her that he hadn't thought to mention. Half of her was resolved to ask him as soon as Sam had gone to bed, to get things out in the open, but there was another, and very much more resolved bit of her that kept telling her not to even think about doing something so bloody stupid, to keep her gob shut because for the first time in ages she wasn't actually unhappy and dragging all that shit up again would only spoil things, especially if he didn't already know any of it.

She was inclined towards the ignorance is bliss theory, after all it was only going to be for a few more days so there was no real need for her to spill the beans, was there?

-OG-

Being aware that someone was watching her made her all fingers and thumbs so that things she'd already washed kept slipping out of her hands and back in the water splashing her 'T' shirt so that the front ended up soaked as she did the supper dishes and wondered why the fuck he didn't buy a dishwasher. Despite keeping her back firmly towards him she could feel him _looking_ and suddenly an in-depth discussion about anything at all didn't seem like such a bright idea. In fact she thought she'd really rather not talk about it all again, she was tired of people that she liked, and she thought that maybe she did like him, a bit, or sometimes, when he was in a good mood like this afternoon a bit more than a bit, judging her for something she hadn't done….. .

"Why don't you get a dishwasher?"

"Because usually it's just me and some take-away dishes, or I eat in barracks" He got up and joined her at the sink "Anyway this house is rented, look, just leave it, I'll do it later"

"Nah, it's okay, I've nearly done"

She thought that it sounded a bit shit, really lonely. For all her complaints about living with her family being like living in the monkey house at Regent's Park Zoo or in the middle of bloody Piccadilly Circus, at least you could never call it lonely. There was always people about, yelling at other people to turn the music down or the tele, or to shut up cos they couldn't hear the tele, and there was always people running up and down stairs or slamming doors and shouting that they couldn't find whatever it was they was looking for and that someone must have bloody moved it or pinched it, so the chance of there being enough peace and quiet to be lonely would be a fine thing.

"Why didn't you say some'ing earlier about knowing me?"

"I have no idea , I wasn't sure you remembered me, so" He smiled, reminding her of the days when she and Sandy used to bite the backs of their knuckles when he'd smiled at them, she could hear Sandy's voice in her head and wanted to giggle "What did you do after Carlo's closed?"

"Worked in McDonalds for a bit, stacked shelves in Asda" She shrugged "You know, minimum wage stuff" She wouldn't mind betting that he'd never had a minimum wage job in his whole life "How did you know it had closed?"

"I went back later and found it gone"

"Did you? Shit, I'm surprised, not that it closed but that you went back, I mean it weren't surprising that it closed down, was it? God, it was such a festering shit pit, Sandy, you remember Sandy?"

He nodded and muttered something about "How could I forget?"

"Well, she thought, I mean, we both did, we didn't know you was a soldier did we? Anyhow she thought you was in prison, in Ford Open, and that's why we never saw you again" She took a deep breath "I'm really sorry about what happened that day, I didn't do nothing to make him think it was okay, you know, what he was trying to do" She swallowed hard "I'm sorry that I nearly got you arrested"

She went and sat on the other end of the sofa to where he'd moved and tucked her legs up under her before turning to look at him to carry on speaking, trying to explain"I always tried to keep well away from him, out of 'arms way if you know what I mean, well Sandy and I both did, cos we knew he was a bloody menace but that day I got a bit careless"

"You don't have to apologise, Molly, you have nothing to be sorry for" She listened to him chuckle softly before he went on "I know you didn't do anything wrong, and it wasn't your fault that the police didn't like my I.D., was it? They thought it was a forgery for some reason, had to check me out with the army, and no, I wasn't in prison, I might have been more comfortable if I was" He smiled, obviously with no intention of elaborating on what he'd just said.

"Probably surprised that someone like you was hanging around in that dump, well we all were to be honest"

"So, do I take it then that that wasn't your full time job?"

"Nah needed the money didn't I? Needed to pay for College and to help me mum out 'n that, anyhow, how come you used to come in there cos it couldn't have been the bleeding food and I would have thought it was a long way from your cruising area?"

"I'm not sure I've got a cruising area" He snorted another laugh then rubbed the back of his neck "I needed to kill time one day after I got an early train and I was just walking past, went in and after that it became a habit, I suppose"

"Still what was you doing there?" She bit her lip "Sorry, am I being bleeding nosy?"

"Yes you are a bit" He laughed "I was collecting Sam from his mother"

"Bloody long way from Dulwich wasn't it?"

"She wasn't living in Dulwich then"

Molly could tell that the shutters had come down so that he didn't want to talk to her about it, he'd clammed right up again, so she let it go even though she was now burning with curiosity, longing to ask who and why and when and especially why.

"Did you have any more bother with that bloke in the kitchen after that day, what's his name, did he leave you alone?"

"Piotr, and he was no bother at all after that, good as bloody gold wasn't he after the police had a bit of word in his ear and then Sandy threatened him" She laughed, recognising that he was changing the subject, so she described the way Sandy had stood there talking to Piotr and waving a very sharp knife around at the same time, then how she'd placed the tip of the blade very close to a certain sensitive part of his anatomy "She told him she'd bloody get on the phone to you and get you to come and sort him if he tried it on again, so he never, you scared the bloody shit out of him"

"I didn't actually do anything, mind you, she'd have had a job, I was in Afghanistan"

"Oh, bit of a long way from Battersea then"

"Yup, it was indeed"

-OG-

 _ **A/N; Yay, survived and I was a really brave soldier, CJ would have been proud of me… Thanks for your lovely reviews and good wishes for the sadist, sorry, I mean dentist. The sun is shining and it's warm so I'm going to sit in the garden and watch my dog tear around like a loony terrorising squirrels. Then I'm going to drink far more wine than is good for me and eat my own body weight in chocolate as a reward, I deserve it! Will probably be fit for nothing tomorrow – so see you after the weekend.**_


	6. Chapter 6

_**I Can Show You How My Love**_

Once she'd stopped counting the hours until she could get off home and he'd started to unbend enough to include her in everything, well almost everything, there was a very definite down side as far as Molly was concerned. Mr 'I'm in the army so I'm trained to be observant' hadn't seemed to notice her distinct lack of enthusiasm for this outing, in her opinion you couldn't get much further from fun than a lovely 'group' outing to bloody Stonehenge in the pouring rain. It was pissing down as she looked out of the window and tried to gauge the chances of an improvement in the weather but he either didn't notice or, as she suspected, he was of them bloody awful cheerful whatsits of the 'you'll love it when you get there' mentality. Including her in their outings was one thing, but she could have well done without this, as far as she was concerned it was a day for stopping in and …..well, doing just about anything actually as long as it was inside.

Sam had continually nagged and badgered and gone on and on about visiting the bloody stones since day one, and as there weren't that many days left Charles had announced that a nice jolly walk in the torrential rain that was blowing across the fields was no problem. Scanning the car park before reluctantly getting out of the car Molly thought that the whole place looked unbearably bloody bleak and unfriendly despite the bus-loads of tourists that were milling about, a couple of them had just tried to commit suicide under the wheels of his car, so that Charles had had to brake sharply and had muttered something under his breath that had made her eyebrows shoot up. It was so bloody dreary that the cars on the A303, the ones that were full of lucky people heading for civilisation and nice dry pub lunches had their headlights full on.

A deliriously happy Sam was oblivious to the monsoon and as soon as they were on the path from the car park he'd begun skipping along chattering away like a little magpie and holding onto her hand, swinging it backwards and forwards as he gave her his somewhat confused run down of what the stones were and how they'd got where they were, an explanation that was more enthusiastic than accurate. Molly was smiling and nodding as she pretended to be spellbound with the magic of it all as Charles grinned, he knew just how garbled the explanation was but had decided to keep quiet because Sam was having a whale of a time doing the telling and he could see that Molly couldn't give a shit.

Eventually and much to her relief they turned to go back to the car where it was warm and dry, although it wasn't cold as such, just bloody WET and as they walked Charles began to explain how when he was Sam's age you were allowed to go right up to the stones and walk round them, that fencing them off was fairly recent.

Molly was tempted to respond with "Quite a long time ago then" drawing attention to his age because he'd kept on and on about it in the car on the way there, but decided that on the whole better not, he might be a lot friendlier the last few days but he was still what passed for a boss around here.

"What, they afraid people might pinch 'em?"

Sam turned to look at her, brown eyes huge and serious as he shook his head, a deeply worried expression on his face "Don't be silly, Molly, they're far too big for someone to take them home"

"Yeah, you're right, mate, wouldn't fit in your pocket would they?" She giggled and ruffled his hair "Anyhow what would you do with them? Bit big for a rockery" She put a hand out and smoothed his wet hair back from his worried little face, she was sorry now that she'd started this, she'd thought he would know that she was only pulling his leg and it weren't even funny "I were just, umm, joking that's all, don't worry about it, come on then race you back to the car"

Charles jogged after them with a big grin on his face then put his head back and laughed aloud as they tore down the grassy path towards the car park, Molly was almost small enough in that parka to look like a child herself from behind, her hair getting wet and flying about when the hood fell down. She let Sam beat her by a whisker so that it wasn't obvious to the little boy that she'd let him win meaning that he was leaping about and punching the air with delight, high fiving and dancing around by the car. Suddenly he stopped dead and gave her a nice little conciliatory pat on the arm, 'never mind, you did your best' and 'maybe next time' repeating the comforting words and tone of voice he was parroting from when he didn't win something himself so that Molly bit her bottom lip to stop the giggle escaping and thanked him with the most serious expression on her face that she could muster.

"Beat your dad though, didn't I?" She wrinkled her nose at Sam as she said it.

"Yes, but that's not fair, Daddy's leg's been poorly"

"Has it?" She looked at Charles, chewing her bottom lip, the smirk still on her lips "He goes out running every day so that sounds like it could be a bit of an excuse to me, what you done to it anyway?"

"It's fine" He frowned and raised an eyebrow, then shook his head directing a warning glance in Sam's direction "Bit of Taliban target practice, while ago now though"

"Oh sh ….. sugar"She turned her horrified eyes towards him as she bit back the initial response, it had taken a lot of practice, hard work and self-control to learn how to monitor what she said in front of children and she was proud of the achievement, just sometimes it was hard not to slip back into default mode, the language she'd grown up with. Now she knew why he hadn't wanted to talk about Afghanistan.

"They mended Daddy in hospital"

"Did they? That's good, just as well really, eh? Come on then Sammie let's get in the car and go home, I'm wet right through"

-OG-

She'd obviously noticed that he'd got this slight limp sometimes but hadn't been sure whether he'd always had it, she couldn't remember details from that far back, but now that she knew how it had happened and when, she hadn't got a scoobie what to say to him about it, except that she was a bit sorry for making a joke. On the whole she didn't think he'd want to talk about it, well not here and not to her anyway, and not in front of Sam for that matter, so she took the coward's way out and decided that sayin' bugger all was favourite.

Exactly when she'd started thinking and talking about his place as 'home' she'd hadn't got a clue, it just seemed to happen, but it wasn't _her_ home in any way, shape or form, it was where she worked and she needed to keep on reminding herself of that. The plan that they'd hatched for her to push off after a few days seemed to have vanished as they'd settled into this sort of happy little routine which she was sure made them look like a family to people who didn't know them, like when they was walking up to those bloody stones, but they weren't a family and she didn't want to look at stuff too closely because of the 'what next?' She wasn't sure what was going on with her, all she was sure of was that she was dreading this 'holiday' coming to an end, and not only because she was going to miss them and the cottage and all of it, well everything except for the endless bloody rain, but there were all these decisions she was going to have to make when she got home.

-OG-

Two days before Rebecca was due to arrive to collect them and a few days before he was due to go back to work it suddenly turned gloriously hot and sunny, sods law working again just when the 'holiday' was almost done, so that she closed her eyes and turned her face to the sun and thought about going to change out of her jeans, see if she could get her legs brown then decided that she was too bloody lazy to bother. The cottage had these white wrought iron patio chairs set facing the lawn, or daisy and dandelion patch as it was, so she sat on one and began to watch as the two of them played some sort of complicated ball game on grass that desperately needed going over with the lawnmower. She'd always thought that these type of chairs looked posh and pretty in magazine pictures so that she'd thought she might buy some, well when she had a garden to put them in that is, but now found that they were shittin' hard to sit on and totally horrible on your bum so that she was squirming around as she watched them, well him, get all hot and sweaty.

She'd got absolutely no idea what they were supposed to be playing, it didn't seem to have any rules, just tear around and chase each other and try to get hold of the ball while Sammie squealed and yelled and his dad began to look a bit damp round the edges. His face was glowing with the sun and exercise and his hair was all dark and curly with sweat so that she found herself having difficulty tearing her eyes away, then he lifted up the edge of his 'T' shirt and used it to wipe the sweat off his face giving her a ringside view of his fit looking stomach, and the slight tan of his chest with the … muscles … and the smattering of fine dark hairs that were …. so that she was completely unaware that she was watching him as though she was mesmerised as she chewed her bottom lip, that was until she bit so hard that she made it sting. Shit, she sat bolt upright and dragged her eyes away, only hoping that she'd managed to do it before he clocked what was happening , what she was doing for fuck sake, and that he hadn't seen her staring at him like that with her mouth a bit open.

Shutting her eyes hastily from what was in front of her she turned her face to the sun again, then licked dry lips and waited while her breathing went back to normal. Not for the first time she wished that Sandy was sitting there with her, right now, so that they could have enjoyed the view together.

"Hey don't mean to wake you up, but do you want to go and take over from me, be my team while I go and get a drink?" He was unexpectedly standing right in front of her, close enough that she could have put out her hand just a few inches and touched him "Are you thirsty, shall I get you one?"

"Nah, you're alright thanks, and I weren't asleep, just sunbathing"

She was suddenly desperately tongue-tied and wanted to say that she hadn't been _gawping,_ which was a lie, she had but was hoping against hope that he hadn't noticed. _S_ he'd always known that he was very attractive, _really bloody attractive,_ ever since those long ago Saturday mornings in Battersea, she wasn't blind or anything and she thought that you'd have to be not to notice, and even when he had been being a bloody unfriendly miserable fucker she'd been very aware of just how good looking he was. Up till that moment she'd done everything she could to close her eyes to the way he looked, to ignore it, something that was now going to be much easier said than done.

"You can be on my team now Molly"

Sam's voice was a high pitched shriek of excitement as Molly grabbed the ball, and yelled "Okay" then ran off with it, her feet bare in the long grass as she ducked and wheeled out of reach, long hair flying behind her like a flag, as Charles ran after her in hot pursuit. Sam was jumping up and down yelling "Here, throw it here, throw it to me, Molly" as Charles almost immediately caught her from behind and lifted her off her feet into the air. He was trying his best to get the ball out of her hands and then shouted "Oi you two, stop ganging up" as she threw the ball to Sam who scooped it up, pulled a triumphant face and crowed at his father "Na na de na na"

"Put me down"

Molly was now giggling as she tried very hard and utterly failed to wipe the memory of the body under the warmth of that damp 'T' shirt, that very fit and very well-muscled body that was now pressed against her back. She was inhaling the 'smell' of him, the faint aroma of the citrus shampoo and shower gel that he'd used that morning and which still lingered on his skin, the expensive one that she'd sniffed at in the bathroom, a fresh scent that was now mingled with the faint smell of warm male, so that she bloody well hoped that her deodorant was everything it was cracked up to be. It had never been put to this sort of test before so that she just hoped he wasn't getting a totally different sort of 'aroma' from her as she managed to resist the temptation to sniff her own armpits, just to make sure.

"Nope, that wouldn't be fair would it? that really would make it two onto one"

Charles was trying very hard to sound as if he was serious, as though he was aggrieved but he couldn't help the laugh that escaped as he let her slide down his body until her feet were back on the ground. He kept his arms round her holding her arms tightly against the sides of her body to stop Sam passing the ball back so she tried, admittedly not very hard, to lean forward from her waist and pretend to try and struggle free, at the same time as erupting into a fit of helpless laughter.

"Thought you was gonna get a drink"

"I've had one thanks"

"Have another one then"

"Nope, don't want another one"

He was still holding her against him and laughing, seemingly determined to stop her from getting away so that she couldn't stop giggling either, knowing that she was enjoying the smell of him and the feel of him against her far more than she should be and definitely far more than was strictly sensible.

"Get me one then"

"Nope, if I let go the two of you will just gang up again"

"Won't, promise" She made a valiant effort to stop laughing and to sound sincere and failed on both counts "We won't gang up on your dad will we, Sammie?"

"Is that a promise, Miss Dawes? Do you know something? I'm not sure I believe you"

"Course you can believe me, I just said didn't I?"

He slowly let go of her and she immediately turned and grinned up at him before running after Sam, the two of them taunting him as he pretended to be upset that she'd lied although they'd both known all along that that was exactly what was going to happen.

"Come on then, hurry up soldier, thought you was s'posed to be fit?"

"I'll give you fit in a minute""

"Ooohhh, come on then, you're the weirdo what goes running every morning when you don't have to, when you're on your holidays and can have a bit of a lie in" She was walking backwards as she taunted him, ready to run away the minute he got close "Come on, stop talking and START RUNNING

"Like to see you do a 5K run before that bowl of crap you call breakfast"

"Sorry, can't do that, who'd look after Sam?" She was poised to run off as he laughed and said he'd think of a way to punish her "We're not giving you a chance to make us suffer are we Sammie?" She laughed and high-fived the little boy "And you've gotta catch one of us first, nah, get off, get off"

"Thought you wanted me to catch you" He laughed as he lifted her up in the air "Just doing as I'm told"

As soon as he put her back on her feet she made a determined effort to trip him up while Sam tried to distract him, but failed miserably because it was impossible to hook her leg round his, he kept moving it just out of her reach and then she'd had to hide behind the little boy using him as a shield when his dad tried to get his own back.

Eventually Sam threw himself down on the grass and flung his arms and legs out in a star shape announcing that he was _boiling_ and _dying of thirst_ so that Molly wandered off to get him a drink, and to get herself one at the same time, she was totally knackered and had had more exercise, and far more fun, in the last hour than in the last six months. She stood in front of the open door of the fridge and tried desperately to cool the flush on her cheeks, a flush that wasn't entirely due to the exercise.

"Where are these drinks then?"

"Do you want one? I thought you said you didn't want another one"

"Nope, I didn't want to let you go"

-OG-

 **A/N: Thank you for your feedback; I hope you enjoyed this. Thank you also for your kind words about the dentist, I'm actually okay with fillings and stuff, it's just impressions I can't take, dentist says I have a pronounced gag reflex which means I can't bear anything to touch the back of the roof of my mouth, Oi, stop sniggering, I can hear you from here! Chapter 7 may be a day or so, not quite finished yet, but will be ASAP**


	7. Chapter 7

_**A/N: I am so glad so many of you enjoyed the happiness of the last chapter, the start of their relationship, I really enjoyed writing it! In this chapter their relationship starts to develop into something deeper than pure lust, although a bit of lust never goes amiss … .**_

 _ **Going away for a long weekend (obviously my fault it's bloody raining) with my hero and my dog, which will please my neighbour who keeps coming round to complain that Lily howls at night. Yes, alright she does a bit, we are trying to deal with it, it's usually only for about 10 mins or so at 3.00 ish in the morning when she wakes up suffering from 'separation anxiety' or 'where's my mum? I want my mum'' and I do get up to her, and the neighbour's bloody house is at least 50 foot away! I think she must be a very light sleeper and I hate her, the neighbour not the dog, because I don't know what she expects me to do about it! Any suggestions would be more than welcome, help!**_

 _ **Chapter 8 as soon as it's ready xx**_

-OG-

 _ **Smile An Everlasting Smile**_

The heat of the blush built up in her face until it felt as if it was on fire. It didn't seem to matter how much she told herself to stop it, and that she was being downright stupid to think he was flirting, nothing helped, so she grabbed a cold bottle of water out of the fridge, and began rolling it around against the back of her neck, trying desperately hard to give him the impression that the hot colour radiating from her was just that, it was because she was hot and nothing else.

"Can you give this to Sam for me please?" She was desperate to get as far away from him as she could, or to get him away from her more like, and for someone who'd said he was trained to be observant, he was doing a pretty crap job of reading her body language which was screaming PLEASE GO AWAY "I think I need a shower"

"Yup, me too" He stretched over and put his hand on the fridge door pushing it closed, then looked down at her suppressing a smile by biting at his bottom lip, almost as if he could read her mind, brown eyes seeming to soften as they crinkled up with his smile "I suppose I'd better go and cut the grass first"

"Yeah, 'bout time, lazy so-and-so" She grinned, not caring one little bit about whether the grass got cut or not, but if he went outside to do that it would take him away before she said something stupid like he was free to join her in the shower if he wanted, that he only had to say.

"Who are you, garden police?"

"Sorry Boss"

"I'm not your boss Molly"

"Aren't you? Thought you was"

As she heard the words leaving her mouth Molly wondered what the hell had possessed her to start talking about being his employee and or even worse start encouraging him to talk about his bloody wife, or his ex-wife who seemed to be still running things, God only she could have been that stupid, what a muppet. When was she ever going to learn to engage her brain before she opened her mouth?

"Why do you ask?" Suddenly it wasn't only her that had stopped laughing, it was both of them, and she knew from the tone of his voice that he was puzzled, but she couldn't bring herself to look up at him, she didn't want him to see the expression on her face, in her eyes, any more than she wanted to see the expression in his "Look at me Molly"

"No"

His voice was soft and gentle as he relented and rubbed his hand on the back of his neck "Well, as you already know Rebecca is the one that started all this so she's the one who'll be getting the bill" He paused and then laughed softly "And then she'll give it to me to settle up afterwards" He shook his head and grinned "Are you expensive? Knowing Rebecca this is costing an arm and a bloody leg; she'll be doing her best to bankrupt me"

"Shit, I hope that's a bloody joke, look, I really don't get paid much at all …." She paused and thought for a moment, she'd sort of forgotten that he, or someone, was paying for her to be there and she'd never even considered before how expensive it might be "Can't be that expensive, mind you, Simon most likely charges a bleeding fortune but only pays us peanuts" She finally risked sneaking a little look at him from under her lashes and was reassured to see that he was still smiling down at her "You was right, though, you never needed any help at all did you, so what am I doing here?"

"I have NO idea, bloody glad you are though"

He smiled at her, this funny, clever, good-looking man who was such good company smiled at her, the expression on his face so open and happy that she forgot that she was embarrassed and that he was way out of her league, and smiled back, and something inside her fluttered, then flipped over and fell into place.

-OG-

"Don't sleep with this one" She could hear Simon's voice echoing in her head somewhere as she stood under the shower and enjoyed the warm water flowing over her body and wondered whether or not to shave her legs, the last thing she wanted was for him to think that she was some sort of Gorilla, then gave herself a mental shake, sniggering as she remembered that long ago conversation with Sandy when she'd said that it would be rude not to, she put her head back and laughed out loud, God, that was the second time she'd thought about her today and shit, there was nothing like being a bit previous was there? What was it her mum used to say when she was little? Wait till you're asked.

By the time she got back downstairs and went in the garden to sit on the step and dry her hair with a small towel, it was far too nice to stay indoors and use the dryer; Sam was giving a masterclass in the art of parental persuasion. He was employing every begging, pleading and whining weapon in his armoury together with the ultimate guilt inducing manoeuvre of the odd tear, a ploy that was custom designed to make his dad feel bad until the little bugger got his own way. Then Sam, sporting a triumphant happy smile, helped Charles drag an old barbecue out of the shed, the shed that Molly had once thought she'd be banished to sleep in, and was busy helping Charles clean it, getting rid of all the cobwebs and spiders. It would be the first barbecue that Molly had ever been to although she didn't mention that to either of them; for some reason it felt a bit pathetic at her age. There had been one or two at Upton Park in the last few years, but she'd always been busy working at McDonalds or Asda on those nights and barbecues weren't something that had caught on as a popular pastime in the concrete world of east Ham, probably because of a lack of gardens apart from anything else and no-one in their right mind could pretend it was the same on a smelly concrete walkway.

Sam was in a welter of impatience as Charles went for a shower, continually shouting "Hurry up Daddy" from the bottom of the stairs until Molly thought that he was in danger of being told he'd pushed his luck too far, but eventually they went off together to buy charcoal and to get meat and French bread and stuff from Waitrose. Molly volunteered to make the salad but Charles insisted that it wasn't the same if you had to do it yourself and had then started messing about with charcoal trying to get it to light, saying he didn't like the taste of the food if someone used fire lighters. Molly shrugged, she would have thought that whatever made it easier, but then she hadn't got a clue what fire lighters tasted like, so what the fuck would she know? Eventually, after a virtual lifetime of faffing about and muttering of bad language through a haze of smoke, he got it going to his satisfaction, then declared it was hot enough to start cooking on just as Molly wondered whether she should start pacing herself a bit with the red wine he'd opened. She was getting bored stupid with the whole bloody performance and the wine was beginning to slip down a bit too easily so that if she wasn't careful she was going to be hammered before the food was even ready.

e He was enjoying himself immensely waving a pair of tongs about like he was Gordon Ramsey or someone, well, without the language obviously, or more likely the posh one, Hugh thingy whatsit, as she admired the way he kept stepping back hastily as things sizzled and spluttered on the hot grill, and then how he jumped out of the way just in time when the flames flared up. _They_ might be well used to it, but she wasn't, and even as she thought how much the little bleeders would enjoy this, she couldn't help thinking it would be a lot quicker and a bloody sight easier to cook the food in the kitchen and then sit outside to eat, but decided that on the whole it'd be best to keep her mouth shut as she listened to Sam's constant whinge of "How much longer Daddy?"

Charles had spread a blanket on the grass so that they didn't have to sit on the arse killing chairs and she couldn't remember ever being happier as she sat there next to him, glass of wine in one hand, plate of food in the other with his long legs stretched out by hers. Sam had wedged himself in between them wriggling till he was where he wanted to be so that he could use his dad's legs as a convenient resting place for his plate. She'd had to stifle her laugh at the expression on his face when he'd insisted on tasting a bit of rocket and had then spat it out, trying not to let either of them see his expression of acute disgust. Charles had opened a second bottle of wine, the first one seemed to be empty somehow, so that the whole evening seemed to her to be magic, the sun was still warm enough for 'T' shirts, even though it had lost the stinging heat of the afternoon and there weren't too many midgey insect things flying around biting them. She'd creased up with laughter, her mirth probably helped by the amount of wine she'd necked, when she'd asked him if he was trying to poison them with slightly underdone chicken legs, telling Sam to spit it out, and pointing him towards the sausages that were so well-done they were almost cremated.

"Did you enjoy yourself?"

His voice was quiet, almost, but not quite, a whisper, as if he didn't want Sam to hear what he was saying, although Sam wasn't taking any notice of them at all, he was now clambering up on his climbing frame yelling "Look Daddy, look Molly, see what I can do" Charles had stretched himself out on the blanket next to her, head resting on arms that were folded behind him as he looked up at the odd little puff of white cloud, the edges tinged with pink and gold, and then turned his head and supported it on one arm as he looked towards where she was sitting with her arms around her legs, chin resting on her knees as she watched Sam.

"Yeah, it was fun, all of it" She waved at Sam then clapped, applauding his efforts, at the same time as calling out to him to be careful and make sure he was holding on "That was the first time I've ever been to a barbecue"

"Was it?"

"Yeah, not a lot of them where I come from"

"God, and I tried to poison you, sorry about that" He gave a little chuckle "I didn't manage to put you off then?"

"Nah, it was fine" She thought for a moment then chuckled "The wine helped"

"Good, glad to hear it" He paused "Not the wine, I didn't mean that, it's just that Rebecca used to say that she hated barbecues, she always complained about the food, said it was mostly inedible, that you needed at least three hands to balance your glass and plate and cutlery and when it was a party no-one ever had enough chairs so there was never anywhere to sit" He thought again for a moment "Except for the floor of course"

"Oh" She actually thought that Rebecca might have a bit of point, although sitting on this blanket having a nice exclusive party of, say, just two people and of course a little boy was different.

"Sorry" He expelled a short laugh down his nose "How to ruin the atmosphere and fuck up the party, she always said I was bloody good at that"

"Did she?" Molly really didn't want to talk about Rebecca "Is this a party then?"

"I don't know, what do you think?" He looked away from her and focussed on Sam who was now hanging upside down from the bars of his climbing frame then swallowed hard, making an obvious effort to change the subject "What would you like to do tomorrow? I can't believe it's your last day"

"I don't mind, let Sammie pick, or do you two wanna go off somewhere just the two of you, spend some time together on your own before he has to go back"

"He won't see it as a problem going back home with his mother, or at least I hope he doesn't, she's his mum and he loves her and she loves him every bit as much as I do so don't run away with the idea that he'd rather be here with me, because I don't think there's any truth in that, and I don't want him to ever feel that he has to take sides" He smiled "Anyway, why the fuck would we want to do something without you?"

"Dunno, just thought you might"

"Of course not" He expelled another short laugh and ran his hand through the curls on the back of his neck, something she now recognised that he did when he was concerned "You know that you were supposed to get on my bloody nerves don't you, so that I would send you packing?"

"Why?"

"Not sure but I think it was to prove something to me, I'm not sure what, but I certainly wasn't supposed to like you"

"Do you?"

"Do I what, do I like you?"

He sat upright and picked up the bottle of wine gesturing towards her in an unspoken invitation, topping up her glass before refilling his own. She felt the absolute need for more alcohol even though she knew she should shake her head, more alcohol was not the best plan at that moment because it usually had this way of making her mouth and brain disconnect. He looked at her steadily as she chewed at her bottom lip, not sure now what the fuck she'd thought she was doing, if in fact he didn't _like_ her and was just tolerating her, she'd just embarrassed the life out of him, he could hardly say _no,_ he didn't like her, could he?

"No, of course not, why would I?"

"Oh"

She turned agonised green eyes towards him, fuck, that had felt like a hammer blow, she'd really thought he wouldn't say no he didn't like her, so she supposed it served her right for making an assumption but that didn't stop her cringing and shuffling around trying to work out how on earth she was going to get up without looking totally awkward, she'd just found out the hard way how wrong you can be and still not die of embarrassment.

"Sorry, that was stupid, it was meant to be a joke, pretty crap one though, wasn't it? Of course I like you, I thought you knew that, I probably like you far too much"

"Do you?" She grinned as a flood of relief washed over her. She wanted to ask "Like me too much for what" but decided that that might well be the wine talking and it would be best to shut the fuck up especially as she was now finding it more and more difficult to look at him.

"Will you miss me?"

As she heard the words leave her mouth she began to reconsider the wisdom of that last glass of wine, which seemed to be half-empty already, another stupid unguarded question, shit, what the hell was she going to ask him next? His bed or hers?

"Well, I do know that this place is going to be really quiet and very empty without the two of you"

"You sayin' I'm noisy or some'ing?"

"Yup"

"Nah I'm not, quiet as a little church mouse, that's me"

She couldn't stop smiling now, some of it was the pure relief that it wasn't just her as he laughed and picked up her hand from where it was wrapped round her legs, put it up to his mouth and kissed her knuckles, smiling into her eyes as he did it, before turning back to look at Sam, making sure that the little boy wasn't paying any attention to them "What about you, are you going to miss me, us?"

"What do you think?"

Somehow the whole evening, the whole day, had passed in a single heartbeat so that it was getting dark around them as Charles got up and put out his hand to help her get tipsily to her feet. He kept her hand wrapped in his as he called to Sam that it was time for bed, then turned to look at her in the gathering dusk and smiled and okay she'd be the first to admit that she was a little bit on the pissed side of sober, and that this totally gorgeous, unbelievably sexy man with the chocolate brown eyes hadn't actually said that he would miss her, but he was holding her hand and smiling down at her and it just felt completely _right._

-OG-


	8. Chapter 8

_**A/N: Thank you for the lovely reviews, glad you enjoyed their bbq and hope you enjoy the after-party! Thanks for your good wishes for our weekend which was lovely, and thanks for all your suggestions on dealing with our problem neighbour, you'll see I can't bring myself to blame Lily. Specially liked the one about telling the old bat that the howling is not the dog but my hero who turns into a werewolf …. And that I'll send him round …..**_

 _ **Hopefully Chapter 9 tomorrow**_

 _ **-OG-**_

 _ **A Smile Can Bring You Near To Me**_

"It's not fair" Sam went pounding up the stairs "I _hate_ you Daddy, I really, REALLY HATE you"

"What's up mate?"

Molly spun round to watch him as he thundered past her and disappeared upstairs slamming his bedroom door as hard as he could then started kicking it for all he was worth as Charles pulled a face at her and followed him slowly. Trying to reason with him through the closed door turned out to be a severe tactical error, which Molly could have told Charles, well, if he'd have asked, because as soon as Sam heard his father's voice he re-doubled his efforts to kick the hell out of the door at the same time as substantially increasing the volume of his protest so that he was now bawling at the top of his lungs that he _**HATED**_ him.

It was obviously not his first ever melt down but it was definitely the first Molly had seen; and okay it was late and he was a bit over-tired, but he was absolutely distraught about something that he seemed to believe his father could do _if he wanted to._ He set about disproving any theory she'd had that nice little boys from nice middle-class homes were immune from behaving like bloody little monsters by being as bad as any of her brothers at their worst, well without the fruity language admittedly but she found it all rather comforting if a bit awkward because she'd got no idea whether she should step in and help or not. On the whole she thought not. Things between her and Charles might have changed for the better quite drastically, but that bloody little word _"inflicted_ " would keep popping itself into her brain whenever there was an issue that involved Sam, no matter how hard she'd tried to make it go away and stay away, and anyway, Charles would ask her if he wanted her to help, wouldn't he?

She could hear his voice rumbling away as she moved to sit on the stairs, if she was being totally honest she'd have admitted that she was trying to eavesdrop because whatever it was he was saying, it didn't seem to be working that well; Sam had a lot more stamina than she would ever have given him credit for. Every so often he would begin to quieten down a bit, the screams and yells would get a bit more intermittent and there was a marked slow-down in his attempted destruction of the bedroom door, but he was only getting his second wind because he'd then wind himself up and start all over again so that she was desperate to go upstairs and tell the little bugger that they couldn't talk about whatever it was while he was yelling like that and that he needed to calm down first. She would have done if she wasn't afraid of coming across as an interfering bossy cow of a _nanny,_ and a slightly pissed one at that _._

As soon as it finally went quiet for more than a few minutes she'd hurtled into the kitchen and did her best to look as though she'd been there the whole time as a frazzled looking Charles came down, hitched his bum onto the corner of the kitchen table, then ran a hand over the back of his head and heaved this huge sigh of relief.

"Kerrist, I'd rather sort out 2 section than do that again, and they can be bunch of bloody kids at the best of times"He gave another sigh, then laughed "At least I can shut them up with a stare or I can threaten to put them on a charge"

"Oooh, scary"

"I know that you'll find this incredibly hard to believe, Miss Dawes, but I can be extremely scary, and there's nothing like the threat of latrine clean to stop their bloody nonsense "

"I believe you, I believe you" She giggled and then thought for a moment "What, you get them to clean the bogs?"

"Yup, it's character building" He was laughing at her as she muttered "If you say so"

"Have you sobered up yet?"

"I weren't pissed"

"If you say so" He mimicked her words and tone of voice as he moved across to where she was pretending to wash up the dishes that were already clean and picked up the bottle of wine he'd opened earlier, shaking it to reassure himself that there was still some left "So, do you want some more wine?"

"Nah" She smirked then giggled "No thank you, think I've had enough, actually"

"Really, you don't say" He smirked and upended the bottle emptying the remains into his glass raising his eyebrows "I can always open another bottle if you want me to"

"Don't think so" She paused "Unless you're trying to get me pissed?"

"Why would I do that? Actually I thought you already were, just a little bit" She heard him chuckle "Tell you what I don't understand"

"What's that?"

"How the fuck do you cope when kids who aren't yours behave like that?"

"What, you mean when I can't beat the crap out of them or put them on a charge?" She was giggling as she shrugged her shoulders "Training"

"Are you being a smartarse?"

"Me? Nah, course not, wouldn't bloody dare, would I? I don't wanna clean bogs, thanks very much" She thought for a second "Are they allowed to wear Marigolds?"

"Very funny"

"I know"

Eventually she had to give up pretending to be washing clean dishes and tidying a tidy kitchen because short of getting the steamer out and cleaning the floor, or maybe tackling the oven there wasn't anything else she could legitimately do that would put off the moment that she'd have to turn round and look at him properly. He'd gone back and perched on the corner of the table behind her and when she finally did get around to turning round and looking at him she'd then have to go and _talk_ to him, for fuck sake, and she didn't know how to begin, let alone what to say.

Charles got off the table again and moved to stand behind her stretching out to open the cupboard above her head where the coffee capsules and tea bags were kept, reaching up to take out a Rosebaya, then stood and considered it for a second or two before putting it back and moved to get more wine from the rack. She blinked a couple of times and swallowed really hard because it was now going to be just about bleeding impossible for her to turn round and face him without almost burying her face in his armpit.

"Are you sure you don't want another drink? I can make you a cup of tea if you like"

"Nah, I'm fine, thanks anyway"

He took the fresh bottle of wine and messed about with the corkscrew as she waited for him to _move,_ which eventually he did, but only by a couple of feet so that he was still close enough to hear her breath, she was sure that he'd be able to hear how she suddenly seemed to have far too much breath for her to just breathe in and out normally, even to her own ears it sounded as if she was _chugging_ for fuck sake…

"What was all that about anyhow?" Molly was telling herself to be normal, to just act normal, to ask a normal sort of question in a normal sort of voice.

"What, with Sam?" She nodded "I don't know" He tugged at the curls on the back of his neck and took a large gulp of wine "Well, yes I do unfortunately, Sammie wanted me to ring his mother and tell her that the two of you were staying on here for a few days and that she wasn't to come and pick you up on Friday, and then he couldn't believe that I couldn't just do that, poor little sod, caught in the middle of a war"

"Oh dear"

"Oh dear, indeed" He took a deep breath and shook his head, obviously a bit concerned about what he was about to say next "Look, on top of that I upset him because I told him that when you go home you're going to look after some other children, not him, that it's what you do, it's your job" He put his hands on her shoulders turning her round, then put his fingers under her chin forcing her to look up at him and put his hands back on her shoulders as he pulled his 'please don't get the hump' face.

"He was pulling your strings mate"

"Yup, very possibly, but quite frankly I'd have promised him anything by then, so I promised that you would talk to his mum, and that I will as well, although that'll probably do more harm than good, and that you can perhaps arrange to see him sometimes, I mean, you don't have to, I know I shouldn't have said it, especially without running it by you first" He took his hand off her shoulder and picked up his glass, draining it in one long gulp, then put it down and replaced his hand "I'm sorry, I'm sure he'll forget all about it once he's back at school, back with his friends"

"Oh thanks a bunch, not sure I like being that easy to forget"

"Oh fuck, I didn't mean it like that, that isn't what I meant at all, how the hell could anyone forget you?"

"Rebecca's going to love this isn't she?"

"One of these days I'll tell you all about Rebecca, Molly, I promise" He smoothed a stray strand of her hair off her face and tucked it behind her ear "Just not now, okay? I don't want to think about her and I certainly don't want to talk about her"

"The only thing I really wanna know is why did she want me here?"

Before she could say anything else he leaned forward without letting go of her shoulders and kissed her, just the lightest brush of lips on lips, a tentative, gentle touch that turned her legs to jelly, her stomach into a whirlpool and for some reason made her eyes flood with tears. As he put up his hand and cupped her face her breath caught in her throat at the softness of his skin moving against hers, he'd had a shave since they'd been playing their version of tag or whatever it was they'd been playing earlier, so that his skin smelt faintly of lemons and was utterly smooth where it brushed against her face. His lips were soft and warm as he kissed her again, still fleetingly light and gentle, with his mouth closed, it had felt _right_ when he'd smiled and held her hand earlier and now his kisses, his mouth, tasted so _totally right_ that she closed her eyes and leaned in towards him.

There was a small moment of stillness, a silence, as he lifted his head so that she opened her eyes and looked straight into his, into pupils that were huge and so dark that his brown eyes looked almost black and his finger-tips moved to wipe away the tears that were spilling from the corners of her eyes. She had no idea why she was crying, she wasn't unhappy in the least, far from it, but there was this surge of emotion running through her as he lightly caressed her face with fingers that were shaking slightly, not much, but just enough to tell her something about the way he was feeling as well.

"Why are you crying?"

"I dunno do I? Anyhow I'm not"

Molly put her hands up to the back of his head and tangled her fingers into the curls, gently pulling his head down towards hers, she didn't want to talk, she wanted to carry on kissing him. Her lips parted under the pressure of him kissing her again and again, over and over so that things started to get a bit heated as the kisses got harder and deeper and they clung to each other, bodies pressing against one another as if they couldn't get close enough until eventually, of course, they had to stop, to let go and take a breather or they'd have risked running out of breath completely.

"You. Are. So. Beautiful" He was still cupping her face and using his thumbs to caress her cheekbones as he punctuated his words with small soft kisses dropped onto her eyelids and forehead.

"I'm not"

"Yes, you are, don't argue with me" He lifted his head so he could look into her eyes "You are incredibly bloody beautiful, you're gorgeous, and I've spent the last few weeks looking at you all the time so I should know"

"God, first a bossy scary army person and now a bleeding stalker" She giggled, slightly embarrassed at the way he was looking at her, not to mention what he'd said, so she did what she always did when she felt out of her depth, she started trying to turn it into a joke.

He didn't say anything, just shook his head and pulled a face of mock despair as he started to dot small kisses on her neck, lifting her hair out of the way and tucking it behind her ear. Instinct told him that the words and giggle were rooted in embarrassment as he wondered why someone as gorgeous as her didn't seem used to being told that she was beautiful, she must have been told before, too many times to count.

Slowly the kissing stopped being enough and her hands found their way under his 'T' shirt; her small fingers lightly tracing the muscles on his back leaving a trail of goose bumps where they touched him so that he shivered as he slid his own hands under the back of her shirt. He could feel her quivering as he started to slide his own fingers lightly up and down her skin tracing the back straps of her bra. Her response to his touch, the way she pressed herself against his chest meant that he had to try and angle himself away from her otherwise she'd have been able to feel for herself exactly what effect she was having on him.

"Why are we still in the bloody kitchen? Let's go and sit somewhere more comfortable"

He started to kiss a trail round her neck again, lifting the heavy hair to one side so that he could kiss round to her ear.

"Nah we can't, you know we can't, not with Sam 'n that, what happens if he wakes up 'n comes down to find you?" She thought for a second, desperately wanting this to continue, but, and there was a 'but' that was managing to make itself felt through the flood of desire that was in danger of overwhelming her "Anyhow ….. "

"He won't" Charles took a deep breath and carried on kissing her neck "Anyhow what?" He stopped, and took an even deeper breath as he registered something in her voice "Okay, you're right, of course you're right, let's just go and sit down … somewhere more comfortable …. have a chat … or something"

"Yeah, right" Molly bit her bottom lip and smirked at him making it obvious that she had no faith in that commitment at all, and then laughed out loud at the expression on his face "It's just that…. I dunno really, it's just ….. " She shrugged, not sure how to put her reservations into words.

"It's just that it's too soon"

"Yeah … sorry"

"Don't be, you're absolutely right, let's just go and sit down, nothing else, just … sit somewhere comfortable"

-OG-

"Hey, you promised, remember?"

"So I did, sorry I forgot"

"No you bloody didn't" Molly put her hands round to her back under her shirt and adjusted her bra clasp properly where he'd just half undone it "We 'aven't known each other for more than about five minutes"

"I know, you're right, sorry …." He smirked and bit his bottom lip "But only if you don't count when we knew each other before"

"We didn't _know_ each other before, did we?"

"No, suppose not"

They'd been cuddling up at one end of the sofa instead of the opposite ends they usually favoured with Charles holding her firmly across his lap, making it very difficult for him to stop his hands from wanting to wander of their own accord as soon as they'd exchanged the first lingering kisses.

"I feel like a bloody teenager again necking on the sofa after my parents had gone to bed"

"Never did that, it was usually my parents that was necking on the bloody sofa once we'd gone to bed"

"Well no, I mean I didn't either, I was just ….. umm …. talking ….. umm" He smirked then laughed out loud "Umm … just talking in general"

"Yeah, course you were" Molly twisted round so that she could look at his face "Bet you had all the girls after you even then, didn't you?"

"What do you mean even then? No-one's after me, well, apart from you hopefully , and certainly not when I was spotty and skinny and I was so bloody shy I didn't know what to do with my hands and feet, I had this habit of tripping over them when I was trying to talk to a girl, tripping over my feet I mean, not my hands"

"I bet you were cute" Molly giggled.

He laughed as he shifted her slightly off his lap, more than anything he longed to just take her up to bed _,_ but was pretty sure that this was more likely to end with him having a cold shower instead "No, I wasn't, anything but, and what about you? I'm surprised you're not married with a couple of cute little kids" He stopped and looked at her, putting on a fake worried frown "You're not are you?"

"Oh bugger forgot all about them, knew there was some'ing" She paused and giggled "I'm only twenty three, I'm far too young, not like you"

"Thanks … and I'm not that old"

"If you say so" She giggled, then raised her eyebrows at him "Nah, I've never met anyone stupid enough to wanna marry me, no-one that I liked enough to marry anyhow" She snorted a laugh "Had lots of offers of other things though"

"I can well believe that"

Molly raised her eyebrows with a look of mock offence on her face, making him examine the words he'd said, then grimace "Oh fuck, I've done it again haven't I? I didn't mean that the way it sounded at all"

"Good"

-OG-


	9. Chapter 9

_**A/N: Thank you for your support, I do hope that you carry on enjoying this, your feedback makes all the fear and trepidation worthwhile! I know that the reviews are not appearing on the site for some reason but I am getting them and they mean the world, they keep me going. Chapter 10 is not quite finished but hopefully tomorrow or Thursday, depending on RL.**_

 _ **-OG-**_

 _ **Don't Let Me Find You Gone**_

 _ **Cause That Would Bring A Tear To Me**_

She was desperate to ask him if he was okay. He looked pasty faced and peaky as Nan would say and he hadn't even gone out for his run, had just said he was giving it a miss for today so that she was worried about him, but she'd already asked twice and he'd said he was fine and she couldn't keep on going on especially as he'd got a bit tetchy the second time she'd asked. Asking him again was definitely pushing her luck and she was a bit afraid he'd think she was auditioning to be wife number two or something …. .

Their last day dawned as one of those mornings where there's a brisk breeze blowing and lots of little white clouds scudding across a sky that was still a very light blue, the sort of early morning that says that it's going to be a really lovely day, but much fresher than it had been, nothing like as hot as the day before, which she personally thought was a bit of a shame, the hotter the better as far as Molly was concerned. It was the first time since she'd been there that he'd missed going for his run, he'd gone out in everything, pouring rain, cold wind, hot and sticky, it had made no bloody difference before, and she thought he looked tired and heavy eyed as though he hadn't slept well. She kept telling herself that it had nothing to do with her, with them, but she couldn't help being slightly afraid, well, a lot afraid, that he was having massive second thoughts about what had happened. Okay, so they hadn't actually done anything, but still ….

It was only when she'd started falling asleep on top of him that they'd managed to drag themselves away from the sofa and from each other, and only then, as far as Charles was concerned, because however appealing the idea of spending the night with her, a sofa which was far too short to stretch out was far from ideal. He'd then spent what was left of the night tossing and turning and trying his best to get comfortable in a bed that felt far too empty and had kept on turning his pillows over and over seeking a spot that didn't feel like he was trying to sleep on a sandbag. Eventually he'd given up and concentrated on trying to work out a _strategy_ for making sure that the next day wasn't going to be the last one he'd spend with her, someone who'd waltzed into his life and turned everything upside down.

"Will you miss me?"

He'd assumed that she'd asked him because the wine had loosened her tongue, and he still thought that that was true in spite of her denials, but he hadn't been able to bring himself to tell her that he didn't get emotionally involved so he'd fudged his reply. He'd decided a very long time ago that life was a hell of a lot less _difficult_ if you shut yourself off from all that shit, a lot less bloody painful without emotions screwing with your decision making, but now, now he was restless and unsettled because she'd got under his skin without him even noticing. Somehow he'd found himself actively seeking out her company without even realising it was happening, and then, when they'd been playing in the garden he'd wanted … well … . But right now, unless he came up with some …. plan, and bloody quickly, everything was going to fall to shit because Rebecca was going to turn up in just over twenty four hours, Molly was going to get in the car with Scamp, and they'd bugger off back to London and he was going to have his life back the way he'd thought he wanted it. His orderly, controlled life in his orderly neat and tidy house, no dramas or nonsense so that everything would go back to normal, and it was going to feel incredibly fucking lonely.

-OG-

"What we doing today, we going out?"

Sam was given the choice of where he wanted to go, what he wanted to do. He dismissed the idea of Longleat, saying that it was _'really boring Dad, I've been there before, don't you remember?'_ sounding more than a touch impatient as he said it, for all the world as if his poor old parent was prone to forgetting things. He treated the idea of Bournemouth with a disdainful shake of his head, didn't actually bother to comment, and then declared that he wanted to go to Hengistbury so he could show Molly the headland and the sea which would probably be _really rough,_ so thatshe'd see it was 'well cool'. She didn't want to spoil any of his anticipation or pleasure by admitting that her inability to swim meant that she absolutely _detested_ water, but at least he seemed to have cheered up and forgotten all about his tantrum.

An hour and a half later saw them parking in a very windswept car park with Sam champing at the bit trying to get his dad and Molly to hurry up because he couldn't wait to show her the nature reserve and the headland and the beach and Molly wished that "Mr I'm a soldier so I'm good at planning 'n stuff" had bleeding warned her how bloody cold the wind was likely to be so that she could have worn something a lot warmer. Okay, to be fair he'd said to bring a fleece with her but she'd sort of forgotten in the rush to get a picnic ready with him keep telling her to crack on, and it had been warm at home and he hadn't reminded her, had he? She'd never been here before, so how the fuck was she supposed to know that it was going to be fucking freezing, it was summer wasn't it for fuck sake?

"What happened to summer?"

"Are you cold?"

"Nah, course not, baking hot innit?"

She gave him a _look_ of total disbelief that he could say anything so _dumb,_ as he laughed, then smiled to herself as he took off his own fleece and wrapped it round her shoulders, then helped her pull it on over her head, rolling the sleeves up so that she could get see tips of her fingers protruding as if she was a little kid.

"Now you'll be cold"

It was a pretty half-hearted protest because she had absolutely no intention of giving it back to him. The lovely feel of the warmth of his body was still on it, together with the faint smell of him which meant that she decided there and then to steal it and take it back to London with her if she could possibly get away with it, despite the fact that it swamped her completely. The sleeves were at least six inches too long and it reached to just above her knees so that she felt as if she looked like a cartoon character, but it was total bliss because it cut out the chill of the wind completely.

"No, I won't, I don't feel the cold, and anyway being a bit cold sometimes is character building"

"What? You sayin' I need to freeze to death cos it's good for me character? Cheeky whatsit"

He put his head back and laughed as they took the picnic bag from the car and made their way out of the car park, then put his arm round her with his hand on her shoulder under the waterfall of her hair that was blowing around wildly in the wind and shouted at Sam to wait for them as all three made their way towards the coastal path. The feel of his long fingers on the back of her neck made her aware of just how long it had been since he'd last touched her, last kissed her, and suddenly it felt like a lifetime so that her stomach churned and her legs went jelly-like with longing. The wind had whipped the colour back into his face so that he looked a lot better than he had done first thing making her desperate to say something, she wasn't sure what, but couldn't say anything anyway because of Sam keep running backwards and forwards in front of them alternately looking towards the sea and turning round to look at them, urging them to _hurry up._

"Charles" Molly tried to discreetly shrug his hand off her shoulder, with a worried frown as she kept her eyes firmly fixed on Sam _"_ Take your 'and off, he's gonna clock what you're doing in a sec, then he'll tell his mum"

"Then I'll tell her that it's none of her fucking business"

He'd bent down to whisper making sure that Sam couldn't hear him, an action that made her long to tilt her head towards him as his warm breath stirred all the little hairs by her ear, but he did as she asked and took his hand off her shoulder, then promptly ferreted around in the rolled-up sleeve of his fleece to grab hold of her hand instead.

"That's just as bad"

"I'll tell him you've pinched my sweater and my hands are cold"

He was smirking all over his face as they walked onto the headland and battled against a wind off the sea that was so strong it took their breath away, making conversation almost impossible. Sam had been absolutely right, the sea was unbelievably rough with waves breaking against the rocks with huge amounts of spray so that Molly was extremely happy that they were up where they were and not down at the bottom where Sam was pleading with his dad to take him, She was busy compiling her catalogue of credible excuses for not going anywhere near when Charles looked up at the sky and decreed it was time to eat because of it looking like it was going to rain, so that she sent up a little silent prayer of thanks to the weather gods as they looked for somewhere to eat that was relatively out of the wind. She wished she'd remembered to bring a scrunchie as she fought to stop her hair blowing across her face, strands of it were sticking to her lips as Charles kept putting his hands up to smooth it back, tucking it behind her ears.

-OG

"You okay? You've gone very quiet"

"Yeah, I'm fine, you?"

"Why wouldn't I be?"

"Thought you was a bit peaky this morning, that's all, as if some'ing was wrong"

She almost held her breath as she waited for his reply, okay when he'd pulled her to her feet after lunch he'd looped one arm round her pulling her against his side before kissing her on the top of her head which had felt lovely, and he'd grabbed hold of her hand again as they'd started to walk back to the car, but she was still a tiny bit worried that he was just being nice and that he was going to say that he had regrets about what had gone on.

"Of course there was something wrong, I didn't sleep last night, did you?" He raised his eyebrows as he turned and looked at her, then turned back quickly to watch Sam as the little boy went tearing ahead towards the car park "Sammie, wait there, don't move"

"Course I did, it was really late" She paused and took a deep breath, she had no intention of telling him that she'd laid awake for hours in her little single bed with the stupidest, soppiest grin on her face thinking about him sleeping just a few feet away the other side of the wall "Why didn't you sleep? Tell me, Charles" She swallowed hard "If you're regretting it, you know, regretting me, then I need to know"

"What are you talking about?" For a second he sounded as irritable as fuck again, a tone of voice she hadn't heard for a while "Of course I don't regret you, that's not the reason I couldn't sleep for fuck sake" The stern face and irritable tone of voice was back with a vengeance as he ran a hand through his hair "I ….." He paused trying to come up with the right words "I don't want you to go tomorrow, I was trying to think of some way that would let you stay"

"I can't stay, you know that, me contract don't end till I'm back in Dulwich so I've gotta go back with her and if I don't she'll tell Simon, and I need him on my side to sort out me next job"

"I know" He paused then took a deep breath as he changed tack "What sort of job do you think you'll get next?"

"Got no idea, except for it'll be temporary, cos I'm gonna start looking for something a bit different from this"

"Oh God, have we been that bad?"

"Bloody terrible, can't you tell how pissed off I am with you?"

He raised his eyebrows in mock horror and shook his head before trying to force a smile to his lips, he didn't want to think about her going back, as she started telling him all about how she didn't feel she was cut out for this, that she wanted to work with kids who needed her and not just with kids whose parents had careers and loads of money. She didn't mean him, obviously, it wasn't about him, or Sam, Sam was lovely and had everything going for him, including a dad who was pretty alright, although she didn't say that bit, and she was already very fond of the little boy, and his dad, although she didn't say that bit either, but he didn't _need_ her. She'd thought it was what she wanted to do, that it would be magic to get away from the sort of crap that would remind her every day of her own childhood, she'd thought it would be great to live somewhere that was different, in a nice house somewhere, perhaps one like his or the one in Dulwich, somewhere with a garden with a lawn 'n that maybe, but now she thought that she'd be much happier with a permanent job somewhere like in one of the inner-city day nurseries where she'd done her training. She wanted to help with kids who had shitty homes or maybe had parents who weren't the best at taking care of them for some reason. She wanted what she'd wanted when she'd first started out on all this, she wanted to make a difference for kids who needed her, even though she knew that saying that made her sound well poncey.

As she'd talked she got all enthusiastic so that she was waving her arms about as he listened, until she slowly began to run out of steam, suddenly deeply embarrassed at the realisation that fuuuuck, this wasn't something that was of any interest to him at all, that they were simply walking along having a chat and he'd asked her a question to sort of help change the subject, not for her to get all carried away with this deep and meaningful ….. crap….telling him all her life plan.

"Sorry, didn't mean to rabbit on like that, God, you must be bored stupid with listening to all that crap, sorry"

"I'm not a bit bored, and it's not crap and I think, no, I know, that you'll be fucking awesome at it, so do me a favour Miss Dawes and stop saying that you're sorry, you've got nothing to be sorry about"

-OG-

When they got home, that awful 'last time ever' feeling kept rearing its ugly head, she'd be the first to say that it wasn't always an awful feeling, sometimes it was the best bloody feeling in the world when something was nearly over, but not this time, not even close. This time she was dreading it all coming to an end and she was pretty sure that he was as well, he'd virtually said as much that afternoon, not totally of course, that didn't seem to be his style. The three weeks she'd been with him had, except for the very first few days, been the best she could remember. She'd managed to shut all the shit away in a locked box 'under the stairs', hadn't had to think about any of it, but reality was going to be there when she got home to east Ham tomorrow, with everyone more than likely asking her all those questions again, and then she'd have to go and see Simon and his bossy bloody wife, and look for a job when people thought she was some sort of slag.

On top of that she had to face Rebecca tomorrow and he still hadn't said what her bleeding problem was, so that Molly could only guess and she'd started to make stuff up for herself and didn't much like what she was coming up with ….. And she was going to miss him, really miss him, more than she wanted to admit to anyone, even to herself, as it suddenly dawned on her that she hadn't told him about how she felt, she'd told him that she had to go but hadn't said anything about how leaving was going to tear her apart, she'd just sort of assumed that he'd know.

"What's wrong?"

He'd been on the phone to Rebecca for ages and had kept his voice low so that no-one could hear what he was saying, Sam was already in bed and asleep, worn out from a day in the fresh air and the wind, so he wasn't doing it to stop him from hearing, just her. She hadn't heard him come in so that he made her jump as she stood by the kitchen window looking at the garden and struggling with her need to burst into tears, something that Molly Dawes simply did not do and which she certainly had no intention of doing for the second day running, well, not if she could help it. Life had taught her to put a brave face on things, to be tough as old boots, 'hard as nails' her Nan called her, but the tears were gathering and prickling at the back of her nose and her eyes, and she didn't know why, just that she had this feeling that there were a million and one things she needed to talk to him about, and she couldn't think of a single word to say.

"I dunno, I just sort of …. dunno"

"Come here"

He rested his head against her forehead, then put one finger under her chin tilting her face up towards his forcing her to look at him as he ran his thumbs across her cheekbones wiping away the tears that were spilling over, also for the second day running "Don't cry, please don't cry"

"I'm not"

He brushed his lips against hers then lifted her arms and placed them round his neck as he murmured "If you say so" pulling away slightly to grin at her, and then did exactly what she'd been longing for ever since ….. well, all day really, and kissed her, grinning again as he put his head back and shouted with laughter.

"What is it with you and me and this fucking kitchen?"

-OG-


	10. Chapter 10

_**A/N: Bit of local difficulty here, my lap-top decided to start eating things so had to wait for my hero to do a recovery job on the directories, sound like I know what I'm talking about, don't I? Can assure you I don't. Please review for me, I need your feedback because I found myself saying Oh shi*t, can't start again! Luckily didn't have to, not this time, but as we have no clue why it did it he can't guarantee it won't happen again.**_

-OG-

"Nice chat?"

Oh fuuuck, where did that come from? She could hear the tone of her voice and it wasn't great, she sounded like some whining jealous girlfriend, which she was bloody well wasn't, not the girlfriend bit anyhow. Okay, she'd admit she might be a bit jealous, well, quite a lot jealous, but just because he'd kissed her a few times, well, okay they'd had a few snogs, it didn't mean he wasn't allowed to talk to his ex, or to anyone else if he wanted, without telling her what they was talking about or that she was allowed to get all shitty with him. But she felt shitty, he'd been talking to Rebecca for ages, and she couldn't help it, because hard as she tried not to, she couldn't stop thinking that there was something not right here.

"Not particularly"

He raised his eyebrows in a sort of unspoken question, obviously puzzled at the tone of her voice, but she had absolutely no intention of answering, if he wanted to know what was wrong with her he'd have to ask properly. She glared at his back as he moved to get some wine and she was very tempted to wait until he'd poured it before throwing some sort of petulant strop and saying that he should have asked her first if she wanted any because she didn't want wine, except that that would be cutting off her nose to spite her face, as Nan would say, because her jealousy was feeding her self-pity to the extent that the thought of alcohol, and bucket loads of it, was very appealing.

"What's wrong?"

She couldn't bring herself to say anything, even though he'd asked, which was what she'd wanted him to do, she'd wanted him to _notice_ that she was upsetbut it really was none of her business "We were talking about Sam, okay? About his school, she wants to move him, says that the school is not that great, but I'm not so sure, still, what the fuck do I know?"

"Oh" Now they were in territory that she knew absolutely sod-all about, personally she thought Sam would do okay in any school and it wasn't like the local primary would be a shit-hole or a drug den or nothing, was it, not in that area? Still, that was another thing what was none of her business.

"I've told you before, I am not in-fucking-volved with my ex-wife, so why don't you believe me?"

"Sorry" Oh shit, he'd never said that he was clairvoyant, that he could read minds "It wasn't that" She shrugged, hoping that he wouldn't see that she was lying through her teeth, she'd always been a crap liar so that even the little ones saw straight through her "I'm just not looking forward to … you know, tomorrow" Why couldn't she just tell him, what was so hard about it? "I were just sort of wondering whether you'd said some'ing to her, you know, about me, about this." Nearly the truth, well a little bit nearer anyhow… .

"No, I'm not looking forward to tomorrow either" He chewed at his bottom lip as she did her best to avoid his eyes, feeling as the tell-tale tide of colour crept up her neck. That was the other bugger, her neck always went this horrible mottled red when she told lies, although, thank fuck, he didn't know her well enough to know that. He frowned and shook his head as he spoke, a bucket load of irritation showing in his voice "You really thought I was telling her about you? About _this_ as you call it?"

"Nah, well, yeah, I s'pose I did really, I mean, I dunno, do I? Anyhow, it's none of my business what you and her was talking about, is it?"

"I didn't say anything about you ….about this ….. of course I bloody didn't, what do you take me for?"

"Sorry"

"And stop saying sorry, God, I've told you that before as well"

Lovely, their first row, and the stern face and irritation in his voice were back with a vengeance so that Molly wanted to stop and rewind to that bit where he'd put his arms round her and made some stupid joke about them snogging in the kitchen, this was not exactly what she'd had in mind for this evening.

"I know I should have explained, you were bound to wonder ….." He paused and grimaced "When I got injured it was touch and go and well to give Rebecca her due, she was great, she spent a lot of time in the hospital with me, bought Scamp in to see me a lot, but when things got a bit better she decided it would be best for all of us if we got back together" He snorted a laugh down his nose "But I couldn't, the problems we'd had, well they were still there, so I said no" He was staring into space as he moved to perch on the edge of the table, then pulled her to stand in between his legs "Have you ever tried saying 'NO' to someone who always gets their own way? Well of course you have, you're a nanny" He snorted another laugh as Molly thought that no, in actual fact she hadn't, the kids she'd come across couldn't possibly be called spoilt brats, they mostly had nothing, except for Velvet and Silk and they didn't have that much either, except for a whole lot of stuff "Rebecca finds it very difficult to let go of something if someone tells her she can't have it anymore, she's not used to it"

"It's none of my business"

"Stop saying that its none of your business when it clearly is"

"Sorry" Oh shit, she'd said it again and it was bound to irritate him, but what the fuck was she allowed to say? Shittin' hell, this could hardly be going any worse.

"Don't be fooled by the _boyfriend" You_ could almost see the inverted commas round the word _"H_ e's about the same age as her dad and she used to say he was repulsive, well, until she needed someone to make me jealous" He looked at Molly's horrified expression "That sounds arrogant, and I don't mean to, but it's not because she loves me or anything like that, so you can put that idea out of your head, it's because I won't do what she wants me to and she can't bear it, so she's doing her best to show that she's in charge, especially when it comes to Sam. The latest is that she's thinking of taking him to live in the States, that there's nothing much for her here anymore and employing a nanny was supposed to show that I can't be trusted to look after him on my own, so there'd be no point in going for custody, not that I'd put him through that"

"Shit I'm sorry, oh sorry didn't mean to say sorry again"

"Her little attempt at manipulating things backfired on her pretty badly though, didn't it? She sent you" He was biting and chewing at his bottom lip then put his head back and laughed out loud "I'm fucking sure that this wasn't what she had in mind" He paused again "She'll be here about midday and I know you've got to go back with her, but I thought that if you ring me when you get away from her, I can come and get you, well if you want me to, you don't have to, obviously …..what do you think?"

"Okay"

"We can come back here or go somewhere else for the weekend, it's up to you" He grinned as she nodded her head "I could pick you up from home if you like, if you're going home to see your family"

"Oh yeah that's a bleeding good idea" She raised her eyebrows and gave a wry giggle at the thought "I don't think so, mate, me Mum would be okay, but me Nan likes good-looking sexy blokes like you so she'd eat you alive, and me Dad, well, he wouldn't care if you was an axe murderer as long as you've got a bob or two in the bank and he can tap you for a loan"

"Are you trying to freak me out here, Miss Dawes?"

"Yeah, did it work?"

"Nope, you'll have to put more effort in than that"

"What sort of effort did you have in mind?"

"I'm sure I'll think of something"

-OG-

Lovely, she'd gone from jealous as fuck that they might be going to get back together or that they weren't even properly apart, to being shit-scared that he was doing _this_ to get back at the ex, to teach her a bloody lesson because of the underlying thing that was going on with them. She knew all the theory stuff about separated couples and their kids 'n that, how they were still sort of together, even if they weren't actually together as such, and that because of Sam, Charles would never be free of Rebecca, not for years and years anyway. It wasn't like she couldn't cope with that or nothing, she could, or she thought she could, mind you as mum would say, it might be better to leave off worrying about it until she was asked, anything else was a bit previous even for her.

They were back to their opposite ends of the sofa and there was this terrible, horrible silence as they both tried to think of some neutral topic of conversation, until Charles sat forward and looked down at his feet, then looked sideways up at her, a small smile playing around his lips "Told you I was good at fucking things up, didn't I?"

"You haven't, it were me, I got a bit jealous, sorry, I know, I know, but sorry I can't stop saying it, think it's a bit of a habit"

"No, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to make you feel that you couldn't say what you wanted to, I just want to make you happy, that's all"

"You do" She giggled "well, you could do"

"What are you suggesting, here Miss Dawes?"

He was laughing as he said it so she shifted along to sit herself next to him, to curl up by him, and then reached up to kiss him on the cheek. She wanted to kiss him, wanted desperately for him to kiss her, for the mood between them to change and for them to get away from all the deep and meaningful crap, because time was running out and although he'd said about the weekend, there was no guarantee, and in her experience life had this way of stuffing things up. That was when she kissed him. She simply looked up into those brown eyes of his and kissed him, on the lips, not a lingering open mouthed kiss, not a passionate kiss and definitely not one with tongues, but a gentle little kiss that was full of the affection for him that was bubbling away inside her.

They drew apart and just looked at each other and this time there was no talk about it being too soon or about not knowing each other well enough or long enough, because suddenly they were kissing one another as if there was no tomorrow. He flipped her over and tucked her under him so that his solid weight was pressing her down into the sofa cushions and there was absolutely no suggestion of some chaste little chat or kissing, just increasingly steamy passion which meant that their breathing was very rapid and very ragged. This time he made no attempt to angle himself away from her, the absolute opposite was true and she could feel every bit of how much he wanted her, which was probably matched by the way she wanted him. The only possible way that she could have got any closer was if he could unzip his skin for her to crawl inside, or do what she wanted to do more than anything else in the world, which was to go to bed with him.

"Come on" He struggled to his feet and pulled her up to hers, then looked down into green eyes that were absolutely huge and slightly unfocussed, full of desire as they looked back at him "Let's go to bed, this sofa isn't bloody long enough for this"

As soon as she nodded he swept her off her feet and laughed out loud, sounding unbelievably happy, as he said that he was just making sure she didn't seduce him on the stairs.

"I'm not gonna seduce you on the stairs, you should be so bleeding lucky" She threw her head back and also began laughing with sheer happiness "Anyhow, would of thought you was too old for messing on the stairs"

"I am not too old, I'll show you if you like"

"You can't, Sammie might come out to see what his dad's up to"

"Okaaaay, not the stairs then, bedroom it is"

"Put me down, I can walk, and anyhow you might drop me on the stairs, if you break me bloody neck, how will you explain that to Rebecca?"

"I can't, but then I wouldn't have to, I'd leave you to tell her"

"Thought you was s'posed to be a gentleman?"

"Who told you that?"

"You did"

"Oh well, in that case it must be true, and I'm not going to drop you, you only weigh about half as much as a feather"

"You are such a liar Captain Army Bossy Person" She giggled "But such a nice one"

-OG-

He leaned against the door watching her as she stood and looked around his room and he was aware, probably for the first time in a very long time, well the first time he'd acknowledged it anyway, just how little of his character was in it. It was immaculately tidy, army ship-shape so that it would have passed a kit inspection, but apart from one single photograph of his parents and a couple of Sam there was nothing of him on display at all. As he looked at it through her eyes he realised that it was soulless, that nothing in there had any kind of emotional significance attached to it at all, it was the story of his life over the past few years.

He'd had relationships since he and Rebecca split, quite a few actually, both before and after he'd been injured, and always with the same kind of girl, tall, blonde girls with long legs, physically similar to Rebecca, girls from the same kind of background as his own, but there had been no real emotional attachments, not on either side. They had been physically satisfying relationships, and they'd always liked one another, but he hadn't _loved_ any of them and they hadn't loved him, not that he knew of anyway, so that when it was over they'd been able to walk away with only some fleeting regrets, but with no real pain on either side.

He'd be the first to admit that the girl standing in front of him was probably far too young for him. She was also totally different in just about every possible way to anyone he'd ever been involved with before, she was tiny with green eyes and dark hair, a girl who came from a completely different background from his so that she was very skilful at mangling the English Language. But she was the girl who made him laugh more than any girl he could ever remember, the girl whose company made him happy just by her being there with him, by her smiling at him the way she did, so that this girl and what she called ' _this'_ were now incredibly bloody important to him.


	11. Chapter 11

She wished she could conjure up some sort of sexy 'come hither' look because the white-hot 'gagging for it' passion seemed to have buggered off somewhere between the sofa and the bedroom door and had been replaced by some insane desire to giggle which would just about put the kibosh on everything. He was leaning against the door watching her, hooded eyes fixed on her as she looked round and then went and sat on the edge of his bed, neither of them had said anything as her eyes flickered in his direction then looked away quickly after just a fleeting glance. She was trying desperately hard to keep her face under control.

She'd been in this room once before, when she'd still been in the house on sufferance and had changed the bed cos she'd been looking for something to do, but she hadn't noticed then just how neat and tidy he was, and she bloody well hadn't made the bed nearly as .….. Precisely …. as he did. It wouldn't have surprised her if he'd used a bloody ruler to make absolutely sure that the pillows and duvet was on straight, so that she wondered what the fuck he'd make of the room she shared with Bella, Jesus, he'd have a bloody blue fit. Probably just as well he weren't gonna see it.

The urge to giggle and to keep on giggling like a schoolgirl was terrible; she'd got this overwhelming attack of nerves for some unfathomable reason so that finding something to sit on, like the side of his bed, turned into a bleeding necessity. Her legs were all shivery and shaky from the bucket load of adrenalin that had been there until .sity when her 00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000…. well, until the moment they'd come in the room and he'd closed the door.

It wasn't as if she didn't want to have sex with him, when they'd come up here she'd been raring to go, but he was bloody gorgeous and he was looking at her like ….. well ….. and flirting with him and even snogging him was one thing, and if anything, she fancied him even more with his face all stubbly, if that was even possible, and it wasn't because he was so ….. attractive, although that might be part of it, but when she thought about it properly she couldn't imagine what the fuck he thought he was doing messing with someone like her. He was so far out of her league that it was almost a joke, sort of laughable, in fact she wouldn't of believed it herself if it weren't that she was there, in his room, sitting on his bed, and it wasn't as if she was a virgin or nothing, she'd had sex before, more times than she cared to think about and it wasn't like it had ever been that big a deal, but this was. For some reason this felt like a very big deal indeed.

"You okay?"

"Course, why wouldn't I be?"

She shrugged trying to look all nonchalant and sophisticated and unconcerned as he came away from the door and sat next to her on the side of the bed, then smiled at him, well it felt more like a rictus grin than a smile, but she did the best she could in the circumstances "Oh, I dunno, sorry, I mean, you're you, and whatever you say you're my boss and I'm ….. I'm just me for fuck sake, and a couple of weeks ago you was trying your best to get shot of me, you didn't even want me here in your house and now look at us and after tomorrow, well, who knows?"

"Look at me, Molly, I'm not your boss" He grinned and smoothed her hair back, tucking it behind her ear "I've told you that before, and it's okay to change your mind you know, if you're not sure, it really is okay, I don't expect you to do anything you don't want to, and there's no rush, is there? And you do know what's going to happen after tomorrow; I thought we'd talked about that?"

"I'm not nervous and I haven't changed my mind" She shrugged, knowing that as convincing lies went that was probably at least a 2 on a scale of 1 – 10.

"I'm nervous" He chuckled at the way her head spun round to look at him, not sure whether he was just saying that to make her feel better, but he was telling the truth, he was nervous, and he had no idea why.

As soon as he stretched out on the bed next to her and gave her one of his heart-stopping smiles, put his hand up and stroked her face with his gentle hands smoothing the stray wisps of hair back behind her ears, as soon as he pulled her in close and put his arms round her and kissed her gently, she forgot all about being nervous. The lovely excited tingly feeling in her knicker area came back with a vengeance which made pressing herself against him inevitable, and pressing against one another led to forgetting all about everything except touching and stroking and kissing and holding each other as tight as they could. His breathing was getting more and more ragged as he got harder and harder, so that she moved to lean over him and began dotting his neck with little kisses, making him lift his chin and tilt his head back with his eyes closed.

They snapped open and then closed again as she let her hand slide down his back tracing the muscles slowly with her index finger until she stroked down his bum, then cupped it and pulled him against her for a second before allowing her fingertip to drift over his hip bone and cross his stomach to run lightly down the length of him. She watched his face as she touched him, absolutely loving the way he took this short sharp breath almost a gasp, even though it was just the lightest of fleeting touches, hardly even there.

"No ….. don't …." His voice was very low and intense, almost a whisper, as he swallowed hard, nothing like his usual tone at all.

"Sorry" Oh,shit, shit, she almost snatched her hand away in her haste to put a stop to what was obviously a bloody great huge error of judgment on her part, she was mortified that she could have got it so wrong "I didn't mean to …. "

"No, I don't mean … I just meant ….. don't stop"

Then he was kissing her and moved her hand back to where it had been as he carried on kissing her till he ran out of breath, his stubble-rough chin rubbing against her face and neck as he clung to her then rolled her on her back and pulled her shirt over her head, leaving her in a miniscule lace bra which quickly followed the shirt onto the floor. He was whispering over and over that she was beautiful, exactly as he'd known she'd be, his warm breath tickling her skin as he began kissing his way down her body, stubble rasping against tender skin on her breasts until he took one nipple in his mouth at the same time as teasing and rubbing the other with his thumb, looking up at her face and trying to gauge her reaction. Her breathing was now every bit as ragged as his as she finally managed to slide his zip down.

-OG-

She'd whimpered before crying out and clinging to him with every bit of her, so that he'd stopped and kept still, holding her tight while she came back to earth and loving the way she'd smiled up at him, a glorious smile like the cat that had got the cream, a smile of satisfaction that made him feel ten foot tall in a way he couldn't remember ever feeling before. The fact that he hadn't slept with anyone for a long time meant that his ability to wait out had been under severe strain, his self-control had proved to be somewhat lacking as he did his best to suppress the sensations that were mounting to a point that they were threatening to overwhelm him. He was quite literally aching with need, and any thoughts he'd initially entertained about keeping it going for hours had vanished completely when she cried out so that she'd had to put her fingers against his lips to stifle him or there'd have been a risk of him waking Sam.

"You okay?"

"Mmmm, let me see …. yeah, course I am, you?"

"What do you think?" He thought for a moment and then pulled a face, he needed to ask an exceedingly awkward question, although it was faintly ridiculous to feel ….. uncomfortable and hesitant … it was something that he or maybe both of them should have thought about before, and definitely before they'd adopted the 'forget all about it' approach to contraception "Should we, ummm, I mean, did we need to have used a condom? I mean, I'm sorry I know I should have been a bit more …. "

"Bit late now, innit?" Molly raised herself up on one elbow and lifted an eyebrow, as she interrupted him, then laughed at the contrite expression on his face "Nah, you're alright, we haven't just won the lottery or nothing, sorry"

"Right ….. and will you stop saying that you're sorry, sweetheart, otherwise I'll start to believe that you're sorry about this, about being here with me" He thought for a minute "You're not are you?"

"Course not" She thought for a second, then laughed and rolled over to snuggle against him, putting one of her legs over his "Do I look sorry to you?"

"Let me look at you, nope, you look wonderful, absolutely bloody gorgeous"

"You don't look so bad yourself"

He was sitting up with his arms folded behind him supporting his head and was grinning all over his face, what she and Bellawould call a 'happy as fuck' face as she presented her own face for his inspection and tried not to giggle. She'd got up and wrapped herself in his dressing gown, which was big even on him, a present from his mother that he didn't wear but she'd obviously thought that he was a hell of a lot bigger than he was when she'd bought it, so that it went round Molly almost twice and trailed behind her on the floor meaning she was in danger of tripping on it, but she couldn't possibly go to the bathroom naked, or wearing just his 'T' shirt, it wouldn't feel right with Sammie in the house. She'd then made the terrible mistake of looking in the mirror as she'd washed her hands, and then wished fervently that she hadn't, her hair was pretty much what she'd have expected, a wild curly tangle, and her face looked better than she could have hoped for, her cheeks were rosy and even the mascara smudges under her eyes looked sort of sexy. It was the horrendous stubble rash that was shrieking at her, she looked to her eyes exactly as if she'd been well and truly sandpapered so that Rebecca would take one bloody look and know ….

"How bad is it? Tell me honestly"

"It's not that bad"

"You're lying aren't you? It's bloody awful isn't it? How the fuck am I gonna explain it to your wife tomorrow?"

"I'm sorry, I should have had a shave, and she's NOT my wife" He was laughing, a happy carefree laugh which made her want to join in despite being worried about the rash, instead she put one finger against her lips and "ssshh'd" at him "Just tell her that it's none of her business"

"That's easy for you to say, innit? And stop bleeding laughing at me, you're gonna wake Sam up in a minute …. and anyway there's nothing funny"

"I'm not laughing at you, I'm just happy and you look bloody gorgeous, so stop worrying about Rebecca, take that ridiculous thing off and come back to bed" He smirked and raised his eyebrows "Or shall I get up and take it off for you?"

"Nah, best not"

She hesitated and looked at him as he stretched out, a pleading smile on his face as he patted the bed, folding back the duvet and doing his best to entice her back into bed with him. She was torn between desperately wanting to do just that, to maybe even go for round two, and the fear that she would fall asleep and still be there in the morning. She couldn't possibly still be in bed with him when Sammie got up, that was bloody unthinkable and she wasn't entirely sure she believed him when he said he would make sure that he'd wake her up in time, that he wouldn't let her sleep on.

In the end lust got the better of common sense and she took the dressing gown off, got back into bed and snuggled into his arms so that round two was a foregone conclusion. They made love at a far slower tempo the second time round, it was loving and languid and lasted for a very long time, and was ultimately incredibly satisfying, so that they were left drowsy and sated, until Molly felt herself drifting off to sleep, she was cosy and comfortable ….. and still wrapped round him.

"I gotta go, I can't sleep 'ere with you"

"Yes you can, just for a little while, stay for a little while, I won't let you sleep too long I promise"

"Promise?"

"Yup"

-OG-

They made it by the skin of their teeth, she'd woken with a start in a blind panic, jumping out of her skin when Sam had flushed the loo, and was immediately afraid that she'd been sleeping with her mouth wide open and dribbling, which she had. The noise Sam had made meant she'd desperately stumbled around getting clothes on before the little boy came anywhere near his father's room, so that she ended up wearing just jeans and shirt, bra in her pocket and knickers God knows where. She'd sidled sideways out of the room like she'd just robbed the place leaving Charles peacefully fast asleep as she resisted the urge to kick him on the way out, and then ducked into hers, fortunately without running into Sam on the landing.

The little boy was now tearing around the garden as Molly stood at the kitchen window half-watching him and thinking as she slowly sipped at a mug of tea and waited for Charles to get back from his run. It felt very, very weird, almost unreal that in just a couple of hours she and Sammie would be on the way back to London leaving him behind in this cottage that felt so familiar and that this would all be over. In one way it didn't feel as if she'd been there for almost three weeks, it felt like it had only been for a day or so, but in another it felt like she'd been there forever, everything had changed.

"I've been thinking"

"Help that sounds bloody dangerous" He smiled as she turned from the window and smiled back at him, wrinkling her nose as he wiped his sweaty face with the bottom edge of his 'T' shirt, giving her a full frontal of his chest, the muscles that she'd spent so much time kissing and running her hands over the night before, before she'd woken up held firmly against them a few short hours earlier.

"My teachers always said I'd be dangerous if I had a brain, or maybe it was they said if I used the brain cell I'd got, can't remember now"

"Of course you've got a brain, it was them, they were obviously crap teachers" He smiled "What were you thinking?"

"You do say nice things" She wrinkled her nose at him again over the top of her mug of tea "I were thinking about Sammie and his school 'n that, look, I know it's none of my business, but you don't need to worry too much about him, he's a great kid and he'll be okay whatever school he's at, even if it's not some posh nob place what charges a bleeding arm and a leg"

"If there's one thing that's for sure it's that his mother won't hear of anything that doesn't cost a bloody arm and a leg, Rebecca is used to getting everything she wants when she wants it. Her parents are loaded, well, you've seen that house in Dulwich haven't you, the one they've just bought for her?"

"Thought you was paying for that"

"Did you? On an army Captain's pay? I think I might have some very bad news for you"

He moved to perch himself on the edge of the table and pulled her across to stand in between his legs, then laughed as he gestured at the re-appearance of the neat plait in her hair and began to see if he could free it from its restraints.

"What's all this? Mary Poppins?"

"It's s'posed to make me look like a nanny, don't you like it?"

"Of course I do, I'd just like it better if I could undo it" He tightened his arms round her pulling her closer and then craned his neck to do a quick check on Sam in the garden before kissing her firmly on the lips "I like everything about you"

"Stop it; Sammie will see you 'n we shouldn't be doing this"

"I know" he laughed and kissed the tip of her nose "But I need to kiss you"

She smiled as a bit of her brain kept repeating over and over 'I am not in love with him, I cannot be in love with him, okay, I fancy him and I like him and we've had a lot of fun together, but I do NOT love him'. Her common sense was saying that if she told herself often enough there was this bloody good chance she would start to believe it …

-OG-

 _ **A/N: Thank you for your reviews, they mean more to me than you will ever know, except for those of you who also write who will know exactly what I'm talking about. Hope you enjoyed this, Chapter 12 is almost finished so hope it will be just a day or so, anyway asap.**_


	12. Chapter 12

"Daddy, I'm hungry"

Shit, Molly jumped away from Charles as though she'd been shot as Sam arrived at the kitchen door, Charles had been so busy kissing her ear that they'd sort of forgotten all about Sam, well not forgotten him as such, but had forgotten to check what he was up to, and had forgotten that he could get fed up with playing in the garden at any second and would then come in to find one of them.

"Right, hungry, okay, I'm cooking"

Charles had very definitely recovered his equilibrium much faster than she had as he grinned at his son and winked at a very flushed and extremely flustered Molly.

"But Daddy, I wanted coco-pops, Molly said I could have some today, she said that I could help her finish off the packet"

"I am going to cook scrambled eggs for all of us, I'm going to show Molly how they should be cooked"

"Oh, very funny, your dad thinks he's hilarious, Sammie, but he's not, he's just being horrible to me 'n I've told him before, it weren't me that cooked 'em, it was Piotr in the kitchen, I never cooked nothing"

"Oh yes, Piotr, I remember him"

Molly didn't grace that observation with a reply as Charles lifted his eyebrows then smirked at her obviously enjoying himself hugely.

"But Daddy, I've said before, I don't think I like strangled eggs"

Sam's plaintive wail and horrified little face made Molly nudge him with her shoulder and giggle conspiratorially as she whispered, in something of a very loud stage whisper, that they could always sneak some coco-pops later, once Charles had finished pretending that he was auditioning for Masterchef. Sam's giggles made his father start playing up to his audience so that he embarked on a running commentary, turning round to demonstrate what he was doing with each of the ingredients, splashing milk all over the cooker hob as well as into the pan before putting in about half as much butter as he should have done and then brandishing eggs around before cracking them and beating them madly with a fork picking the bits of shell out as he did it, so that a giggling Molly asked him to please let them know when it was time to start the applause.

"I'll give you applause" He turned round again to look at her, doing his level best to try and put on a stern army Captain face "I really don't know what you're taking about Miss Dawes, I'm obviously a culinary genius who should be doing this all the time, and anyway if you are not very careful I'll put you on a charge"

"You can't do that Daddy" Sam was now almost beside himself with his giggles at the way his father was behaving "Molly's not in the army"

"Oh no, she's not is she? I forgot, never mind I'll think of something"

"I'm sure you will, but" Sam wasn't the only one who was giggling furiously, Molly pointed to the cooker behind him where he'd turned the gas full on under the pan with the eggs in it "Culinary genius or not, you might wanna check your eggs, oh and your toast as well cos I think I can smell some'ing burning"

"Oh bugger" Charles turned back to the cooker and did his best to rescue his culinary masterpiece by yanking the toast out of his very temperamental toaster and yelping as he touched it, then blowing the flames off and frantically stirring the over-cooked eggs.

"Daddy that's a bad word" Sam was now giggling even harder than before "Molly, when can we have our coco-pops? Can we have them now please?"

"Yeah" She was also giggling even harder as she got the packet and waved it about in Charles' direction "Oi, Jamie Oliver, do you want some?"

"Nope, I'm going to have eggs, you two don't know what's good for you" He looked for a few moments at the mountain of dried out scrambled egg which he'd piled on top of the singed toast on his plate "On second thoughts, maybe I'll just have some toast instead, have we got any Marmite left?"

"Bleuugh, that's horrible Daddy"

Sam was quite obviously enjoying the very relaxed company of his father as he pulled a disgusted face at the slice of toast Charles was eating whilst making exaggerated faces of ecstasy at each bite.

"Calm down, mate, it's only a bit of toast"

Sam had almost finished running his fingers round his empty cereal bowl trying to make sure that there wasn't a single drop of chocolatey milk left clinging to the sides, when he decided to drop his nuclear bomb into the room.

"Daddy?"

He'd stopped giggling so that he had this serious expression on his face as he kicked his feet against the underneath of the table, something he'd been told repeatedly not to do "You know how you said that maybe Molly could come and take me out sometimes after I've gone back to school?"

"Yup"

"And you know how she's got all those brothers, I mean, she's got three and I haven't even got one, and she said she'd take me to play with them one day, so can I? Pleeeeeaase"

"We've already talked about this Scamp and do you remember what I said? That you'll have to ask your mum, remember?"

"Yeah but Daddy, Molly's your girlfriend now isn't she?" Sam was puzzled as he looked from one to the other knowing from the sudden atmosphere at the breakfast table that there was something wrong but not knowing what it was, so decided to back up what he'd said "I saw you kissing her this morning before breakfast"

Shit, Molly waited in vain for Charles to say something as he got to his feet and leaned against the cupboards instead, okay, what she was actually waiting for was for him to tell a bloody whopping great lie to his son, to issue some sort of formal denial instead of which he just bloody well stood there with his arms crossed over his chest, his hands tucked under his armpits while he looked down at the floor, a stance that she hadn't seen since the day he'd made Piotr leave her the fuck alone. She didn't know whether he was mad at her or at Sam or at himself, or if he was mad at all, it was impossible for her to read how he was feeling as he stood there, silent, looking down but she had this horrible sneaking suspicion that he was smirking.

"It was just a friends sort of a kiss, Sammie, me and your Dad well, we're friends, it was just to say that you and me, well we've had a lovely time, we've had a lot of fun, haven't we? and your Dad was just sayin' well, …. It were just a friendly kiss goodbye, that's all, nothing more"

Sam's face was a puzzled mask of dismay as he looked at her, then turned and looked at Charles before turning back to look long and hard at her, narrowing his eyes, before turning back once more to Charles, his eyes now filling with tears as he spoke. There was a tangible atmosphere in the room that he didn't understand, but every instinct he had was telling him that he was somehow responsible for whatever it was that was going on, that it had something to do with what he'd said, but there was an important point that he wanted them to understand and pay attention to. He was right and he knew he was right and he couldn't understand why Molly was telling him he was wrong.

"No, that's not right, Molly, Daddy and you, you were kissing each other …. well, Daddy was kissing you like when people kiss each other on television or in films, like that film we saw the other day, I know, 'cos I saw"

"Shit, what's he been watching?" Molly heard Charles' muttered comment as she moved to hug Sam, the last thing she wanted was for him to be upset on their last morning as she shot an appalled look at Charles who didn't seem to see what a fucking disaster in the making this was. Sam only had to say something to his mother for everything to go tits up again, there was no way that Simon was going to turn a blind eye, especially as it was true this time.

"That Quantam of Whatsits, but don't start kidding yourself, you're not James Bond" She was suddenly giggling as she hissed at him, realising that he wasn't a bit phased "Come on Sammie let's go and make sure you've got all your Lego and don't worry I'm sure Mummy will let me come and take you to play with me brothers"

"Are you? I'm not"

Molly hoped that his lip reading skills were in full working order as she shot him another infuriated look, he still hadn't moved from his position up against the kitchen cupboards, and was definitely smirking as she mouthed the words 'Shut the fuck up' over Sam's head, he was not helping in the least.

-OG-

"MUMMY"

Sammie had been going backwards and forwards to the window checking the empty street for any sign of his mother's arrival for the past hour or so even though both Molly and Charles had told him that she wouldn't be there for ages. Molly gave Charles a tentative little smile as Rebecca's car drew up outside, she was very aware of how difficult this must be for him and that despite all that clowning around at breakfast time, and then that _lovely_ conversation with Sam which he seemed to think was bloody funny, he had to be feeling sad, but he'd retreated behind that shuttered expression of his so that he gave her only the slightest lift of the corner of his mouth in response.

Sammie flew to the front door and flung it wide open, not giving his mother any time to ring the bell, or to use her own key, she was early, of course she was early, almost an hour earlier than she'd said she'd be there, the way people always do show up early when you're dreading them turning up at all, and Molly had been dreading her arrival. She started swearing under her breath because she realised that the bloody woman turning up this early meant that there wasn't going to be any chance whatsoever of her kissing Charles goodbye, getting rid of Sammie for a couple of minutes was one thing, but getting shot of Rebecca? Probably not a snowball's chance in hell! She would see him later, she knew that, well that was the plan anyhow, so it wasn't that, well, not really that, but there was still a bit of her that was worried that as soon as she disappeared he'd have second thoughts. She wanted to say goodbye to him properly and to just say that she'd ring him later, or really she just wanted to see _that_ expression on his face to keep her going until, well … .

But Sammie was thrilled to see his mum and flung himself into her arms and was now chattering away nineteen to the dozen telling her all about the things that they'd been doing and the places that they'd been and to Molly's sensitive ears her name seemed to crop up with an alarming regularity, she was shit-scared that he was going to drop his bombshell again any second.

She'd forgotten just how sort of 'expensive' Rebecca was, she was very posh and very well-spoken and looked very well-groomed, so that she made Molly feel like a scruffy urchin, something she'd forgotten about his ex-wife. There wasn't a hair on her sleek blonde head that was out of place and her make-up was immaculate, she hadn't even got any wrinkles in her clothes from sitting in the car for hours, clothes that Molly was bloody sure had never seen the inside of the changing room at Top Shop.

Standing off to one side watching and listening and pretending that she was a happy little soldier, a Mary Poppins as Charles had said, and doing her best to look cheerfully 'nanny like' and to paste a genuine looking smile on her gob, she could see that Rebecca was equally pleased to see Sam and that the 'wicked witch' persona she'd attributed to her was, as Charles had said, a load of old cobblers. It was plain to see that Sam adored her, and that she adored him, which was nice, even if she'd personally have preferred it if the woman had been just a little bit of an horrible old cow.

Of course she was well pleased for Sammie that his mum was …. okay, but it was just that she hated watching the woman put talons dripping with blood, or not really blood and not really talons either, but manicured nails that were varnished with bright red polish, not a bitten edge or a scruffy chipped one in sight, but still, they looked like they was dripping with blood and they were mauling Charles' arm. She was clutching at him, holding onto his arm like she had it in a bloody vice, and she kept on moving her hands all over him, well, up and down his arm. Molly wanted to run across the room, go right up to them and swipe her bloody hand off him. And Rebecca was doing her fucking best to shut her out of the conversational circle, was side-lining her very effectively by keeping on standing right up close to him with her back to Molly and then whispering in his ear, so that he kept on bending his head to one side towards her to listen, which meant that Molly didn't only want to swipe her hand off his arm, she wanted to smack her one as well.

She knew that Charles kept on trying to catch her eye over the top of Rebecca's head, that he wanted to make some sort of reassuring face at her, but she was avoiding his eyes, she wanted him to suffer for some reason she couldn't define. Sammie began to tell his mum all about them going on the trip to Hengistbury and how his dad hadn't taken him down to the beach this time like he had when they'd been there before with all of them, Rebecca as well as Charles, a statement that made Charles shoot a quick and very uncomfortable glance in Molly's direction, he didn't look at all happy at where this conversation was heading.

"The sea was too rough Mummy and Daddy said we wouldn't go down there because Molly was a bit scared when it was rough like that and that it wouldn't be kind to make her go any closer to the big waves or to leave her standing at the top on her own"

Fuck, Sammie, that was a gem, Molly looked at Charles beseechingly, trying to beg him with her eyes to get in there and change the bloody subject before Sam got onto the 'girlfriend' bit, to contradict him or something, because apart from anything else she couldn't remember Charles saying any of that, but supposed that he must of done, cos Sammie wouldn't have made it up. She just hoped that he hadn't told Sammie that she couldn't swim so he could tell his mother all about that as well, although she couldn't remember now whether she'd told "Captain Big Mouth" that or not, still she couldn't remember telling him that she was scared to go down to the beach either. As far as she could remember he'd said it was because it was going to rain, nothing to do with her.

Standing off to one side of this _delightful_ family reunion and looking everywhere but at Charles, Molly had the same bloody feeling of being a spare part at a sodding wedding that she'd had when she'd first arrived in this house. It weren't that Rebecca was horrible to her or nothing, it was just this feeling that this woman was looking straight down her nose at her and she had no bloody right to be doing that. Rebecca hadn't really acknowledged her properly when she'd arrived, she hadn't looked at her face once, in fact she'd looked straight past her shoulder whenever she'd said anything to her, mind you, there hadn't been a whole lot of that, she hadn't even asked her how Sammie had been, in fact for all that she and her family were so bloody loaded she had no bleeding manners at all, was just plain bloody rude.

Charles caught her eye and jerked his head for her to follow him into the kitchen on the pretext of checking whether or not she'd got all her stuff up together, but Rebecca managed to put a stop to any chance they might have had of a private chat by following right behind. She'd sent Sammie off to check his bedroom on his own, something that Molly thought was taking a hell of a chance, he was only seven for fuck sake, not even eight yet, which didn't make him exactly reliable.

Eventually and inevitably the car was packed and a tearful Sam was strapped in his booster seat. His father was standing next to the car with his hand on the roof, face a blank expressionless mask as he listened to whatever his ex-wife was saying while Molly stood off to one side, out of earshot and asking herself whether she was totally bleeding nuts to be leaving him like this, without even a proper goodbye, when every instinct she'd got was telling her to go and hug him and tell him she'd see him later.

-OG-

"Hello" He motioned her into the house with his head, a huge grin of surprised welcome plastered all over his face "I thought you were going to ring me, I was going to come and get you, wasn't I?"

"You lied to me, how could you lie to me like that?"

-OG-

 _ **A/N: Thank you for your reviews, I am so pleased that so many of you are staying with me and this, Chapter 13 is almost ready so will be asap.**_


	13. Chapter 13

They were still on the A303, hadn't even got as far as the M3 when it all went to shit for Molly, they were not even half way home. Sam was chattering away in the back of the car which was just as well as his mother hadn't addressed a single word to her since they'd left Charles standing on the pavement outside his house. He'd just been standing there, tall and rangy with his arms crossed, incredibly fanciable as far as Molly was concerned, but without even the tiniest hint of a smile on his face as he'd just stood and watched them go. He'd made that gesture of putting a phone up to his ear but still with no smile when she'd turned and looked at him as Rebecca had walked round the car and got in the driver's side, so that Molly was 100% certain that she wouldn't have seen.

"Mummy, Daddy said that when we get home Molly is going to look after some other children, he said that it's her job, but that if I ask nicely and you say yes, then she can come and take me out while he's away in …. I forget" He pulled a face as he struggled to remember what his father had told him about where he was going and what he was going to be doing "He's going to be looking after ….. it's got something to do with all those children in that country where they haven't got anywhere nice to live and nothing nice to eat or anything, so can she?"

The only bit of that that Molly heard clearly was 'when Daddy's away' so that despite the restraint of her seatbelt she almost gave herself whiplash twisting round to look at Sam in the back of the car, wondering whether she had just heard him right, what had he just said? Where the fuck had he said Charles was going? He'd never said a word, not a dicky bird to her, nothing at all about him going away anywhere, and when, when was he going to wherever it was he was apparently going, and how long was he going for? What was it all about? She desperately wished that he was the one who was sitting there next to her in the car or even that she could text him or call him or something, because she was frantic to _ask_ him, to know what the actual fuck was going on, and she couldn't even ask Sam to repeat what he'd said, not without it looking a bit suss.

"We'll see"

Rebecca gave Sam the stock answer that she always gave when she didn't want to say an outright _**no,**_ but in Sam's experience those words always meant exactly the same thing, NO, and he didn't understand why first of all it had been his Dad who'd said no, and now it was his mother and he couldn't see how any of that was fair.

"But Mummy…"

"Sam, I said we'll see, and we'll talk about it when we get home, not now"

Rebecca's cut glass accent was even more pronounced than usual, sounding like pebbles dropping into a pond as she used a tone of voice that shut Sam up immediately, a tone of voice that the nanny in Molly couldn't help admiring, she thought it was one that she could well nick for when she was with kids who kept on pestering and whining, and she was also glad that his mother had shut him up when she did, well before he'd got onto the subject of her and his Dad.

"Your father is going to Kenya, Sam, that's where these poor children live, the people that we call refugees because their homes are in very dangerous places so that they have to live in a camp, well, until it's safe for them to go back home again anyway and that is where Daddy is going so that he can help to keep them safe"

The sick feeling in the pit of Molly's stomach persisted, in fact it didn't lessen at all on the longest drive of her life, until to her utter relief Rebecca pulled into a petrol station somewhere in Surrey or in the outer suburbs of south London to fill up with petrol and to get Sam the drink he'd been mithering for all the way up the motorway. She'd offered to take Molly straight home to east Ham, had said that there was no need for her to go back to Dulwich first, and it was becoming more and more obvious as the journey wore on that what she actually meant was that she couldn't wait to see the back of her, but that suited Molly down to the ground. She had no idea where she actually was when she told Rebecca that she recognised it and could easily get a tube home from there, but then she didn't have any intention of getting a tube, or any intention of going home for that matter, apart from anything else she would never in a million years have taken Rebecca to the maisonette in east Ham, especially without warning Belinda first. Instead she was going to find the nearest main line station and get back to Amesbury just as soon as she could.

The sensible course of action would be to ring him and maybe ask him on the phone what the actual fuck was going on, or to get him to come and pick her up as they'd arranged. She could find somewhere to wait until he got there, maybe get a cuppa or something while she waited, and she could ask him then, but she was beyond sensible, she just wanted to confront him so that she could ask him face to face what the fuck his game was.

After waiting for more than an hour for a sodding train to Salisbury, then standing all the way on a very slow, stopping every ten seconds, packed to the bleeding rafters commuter train, then an even more tedious and endless bus journey which went all the way round the world to Amesbury followed by a hideously expensive taxi ride to Archer's Gate in a taxi that smelled of disinfectant and air freshener, which made her feel sick, she was just about there when she seriously began to question the wisdom of what she was doing, that actually this was fucking ridiculous.

Okay, she was bloody mad that she'd misjudged him so completely and that those rogue brain cells of hers, the ones that made her make stupid crappy decisions, like buying new shoes when she had no money or having another drink when she was ratted, had kicked in again so that this now looked like one more in a long line of stupid crappy decisions, it might even be the stupidest crappiest one that she'd ever made. In fact all he'd done was snog her a few times, and she'd gone to bed with him once because she'd wanted to, not because he'd forced her or nothing and he hadn't made any promises had he? She'd had a few laughs with a bloody tasty bloke, and a bit of a fling, and now, instead of behaving like any sensible person and walking off and going home, she spent hours bloody haring round the bleeding countryside so that she could have a go at him and tell him face to face that he'd really hurt her.

-OG-

"What are you talking about? What's she said?"

"You're going off and you didn't think to say, you're off to Kenya, or did that just slip your mind? You lied to me, why did you lie to me?"

"I haven't lied, not once"

"Been fucking economical with the truth though, haven't you? All those hours we spent chatting and it never crossed your mind to mention it? Not once. Just forgot all about it did you?" She took a deep shuddering breath "She didn't say nothing to me, it were Sam said something, not her"

"Ahh, yes, Kenya, I was going to tell you, of course I was, I wanted to tell you, but it never seemed to be quite the right moment" He ran his hand through the curls on the back of his head "I never intended to _hide_ anything from you"

"When exactly was you going to tell me, Charles, after this weekend or were you going to send me a postcard, let me know that you'd pissed off?"

"Oh, don't be ridiculous, Molly, of course I was going to tell you, and it isn't a case of me 'pissing off' as you put it, it's my job, it's what I do, I'm in the fucking army and we get deployed"

"Yeah, I know that, but you should of told me you was going before I went to ….. before we went … before we slept together"

"Would it have made a difference?"

"Yeah, well nah, I dunno, but you _**should**_ of told me"

"I know and I'm sorry" He leaned back against the wall and folded his arms, looking down at his feet, before looking up to where she was standing just in front of the front door "I just wanted to make you happy that's all"

"Well you've fucked that up big time haven't you?"

"I told you I was good at that didn't I?" He smiled ruefully "It's not for ever you know, I will be back and I'm sorry, I know I should have told you, of course I should have told you, but I didn't ever mean to lie to you"

Suddenly all she wanted to do was to run across and hug him. All the fight had gone out of her so that she was asking herself what the fuck she'd thought she was doing coming marching in here with all guns blazing, all angry and hurt, he'd never made her any promises, it had all been in her head, and she wasn't the only one who'd had a crap day. For fuck sake, he must be feeling shit about Sam and she'd just done her very best to wreck whatever it was that was between them.

"You know, I think I'd better go, I dunno, all this, it weren't really none of my business was it? I just got meself in a bit of a state … it's been a really shitty day hasn't it?"

"Mmm, has a bit, and Molly?"

"What?"

"Of course it's your business and you being upset was the very last thing I wanted to happen"

"When you going?"

"A couple of weeks, sorry" He was shaking his head slowly as he pulled a face, then frowned as he looked at her "I'm back in barracks on Monday, you know, getting things organised and ….. Oh shit" He swallowed hard looking closely at her to see whether she was about to go into orbit again "Stay tonight, don't go off again now, it's getting late and you must be exhausted, it's been a bloody long day and it's a crap journey," He snorted a laugh down his nose "I should know if anyone does, I used to do it every other week and I was always knackered afterwards" He gave her a tentative smile "You can have my room, I'll use Sam's"

"Do you want me to? Stay I mean" She smiled back, the same little tentative smile he'd given her "You're too tall for a bottom bunk, I'll go in there, I'm used to them"

"Of course I want you to stay, you do ask the stupidest questions sometimes, don't you?" Despite his irritable tone of voice he gave her the first genuine smile since she'd arrived "Does that mean you're going to take your coat off then?"

"Yeah"

What she'd wanted to say was never mind about going in Sam's bed, they could both just use his, but she couldn't, they weren't together in that way. They hadn't got the sort of relationship where she could just go over and drag him off to bed, make everything okay, well okay ish, not without looking like a complete tart anyhow, they hadn't known each other long enough or well enough for that.

"You know, I really don't know what to say here, it feels a bit like tap-dancing in a minefield"

"Wow, can you tap-dance?"

"Nope"

-OG-

The atmosphere between them was a long way from relaxed as they sat at the kitchen table, Molly drinking tea and both of them eating bacon sandwiches, she'd discovered that she was absolutely starving, it was a long time since her bowl of coco-pops, but had declined his offer of opening a bottle of wine. She thought that on the whole she'd made enough of a muppet of herself for one day without adding alcohol to the mix.

"You know, I never meant for any of this to happen, don't you, I didn't set out to get… I don't know, involved, not with you, not with anyone, before I went off to Kenya, well not at all in fact and I certainly didn't mean to hurt you ….. are you going to get that?"

Her phone was vibrating loudly as someone kept trying to call her, then there was the noise of a text message, interruptions that were obviously irritating the fuck out of him, judging from his tone of voice which was full of impatience.

"Nah, I know who it is, it's not important"

She knew exactly who and what it wa as she tur ned her phone off, it was a simple one-line text, a text that she'd been expecting, but one which still sent her into a 'fuckety fuck, knew it, bloody well knew it' head spin.

"What's the matter, what's wrong?"

"Nothing, there's nothing wrong, why would there be? Go on, what was you sayin'?"

"Rebecca and I, well, I let her down, I wanted to be in the army, it's what I do, it's all I've ever wanted to do but it was selfish. She'd got this idea in her head that once we were married I would quit and get a nine to five job somewhere, stay at home with her, although I have no fucking clue where she got that idea from, I was in the army when we got married, so ….." He shrugged.

"You don't have to tell me any of this"

"I know, but I want to" He was staring into space, remembering "It was even worse after Sam was born, she thought ….. no, she was convinced that she would get her own way and she can be a spoilt brat so when she didn't get what she wanted, oh boy, did she get her revenge"

"What, she left you?"

"Yup, she did indeed, I mean, she upped and took Sammie, pushed off to a place in Chelsea while I was in Afghan on my second tour, but that wasn't the half of it"

"What she found someone else?"

"Yup, she did that alright" He laughed, a short humourless laugh which he exhaled down his nose "She found a whole lot of someone elses, slept around like a bloody tom cat apparently, or so she told me when I got home"

"She TOLD you?"

"Oh yuuuuup, of course she told me, there wouldn't have been any point in it if she hadn't, would there?"

"Shit"

"Shit indeed" He got up from the table to answer his phone which had started ringing on and off, stopping and then ringing again repeatedly "That was when I used to come into Carlo's, when she was living in Chelsea"

He checked the caller display and took the phone into the hall to speak to whoever it was who was so persistent as Molly wracked her brains trying to think of something appropriate to say that didn't include the words raving nut job, fruit loop and bloody cow. His absence from the kitchen meant that she could read the text from Simon, not that she needed to, she was pretty bloody sure that she knew what would be in it.

" _ **Office 0900 Monday, don't be late Simon"**_

Shit, it might have been only what she'd expected, but it was still a bit of a bummer, although to be fair it didn't actually say that she was fired. She wouldn't mind betting that she was though, she certainly wouldn't put any odds on her still having a job by lunch on Monday, there was a bit of her that had known all along that Rebecca wouldn't waste any time in getting onto Simon just as soon as she'd found out what had been going on. It was unrealistic to expect Sam to keep what he knew to himself, and why would he? he didn't know it was a secret, that it was something he wasn't supposed to say.

"Who was that?"

Christ here she went again interrogating him as soon as he came back in the room about something that was none of her bleeding business, if he wanted to tell her who was on the phone he would, if he didn't it were none of her business.

"Who do you think?"

-OG-

 _ **A/N: Thank you for your feed-back and sorry to those of you who expected Rebecca to have stirred the sh*t, but I have to tell you that Chapter 14 should probably be sub-titled Rebecca's Revenge!**_


	14. Chapter 14

_**A/N: I know, I know I said that this would be Rebecca's revenge but then I got into it and didn't want to shorten the Chapter, so next Chapter, promise. Thank you for your reviews, I am glad that people are still with me and this, I know it's technically the weekend, being a Bank Holiday, but it's a bloody awful day, cold and cloudy and windy, so not nice enough for any family outing (!) picnic or BBQ or anything, so, oh dear maybe have to do some writing instead …..**_

-OG-

She knew. There was no question in her mind about who'd been on the phone and what she'd phoned to tell him, so that the conversation that they had been having had just shifted into the red zone. She was now well and truly on the back foot and asking herself why the fuck she hadn't thought any of this through. Being so bloody incensed, getting herself all worked up because he hadn't told her and being in a stupid strop meant that she hadn't stopped to think about her own secrets, stuff that she didn't want to go into with anyone, and definitely not with him. What the fuck was he going to think now, that she made a habit of jumping into bed with her boss? God, she wished she could go back to before she'd bloody well wrecked everything …

The way he looked at her when he came back into the kitchen told her that she must look exactly the way she felt, like a bloody rabbit caught in the headlights as she cast around for something to say, some explanation that would change the bloody subject, or even turn them back to talking about the break-up of his marriage cos if they were talking about that she wouldn't have to say anything, or even to having a chat about him going off to Kenya, or something. Anything would do, just not what had happened before she came here.

"Go on, have a guess"

"I don't need to guess, do I?"

She took a long look at his poker face then watched with disbelief as he put his head back and burst into a loud peal of laughter. To say she was struggling to understand was just about the understatement of the century, he thought it was funny? What the fuck was so funny about it? She was obviously missing something here but made a huge effort not to show how bleeding confused and upset she was, it was ridiculous for her to get all affronted and offended because he thought it was funny, to mind that he was laughing instead of telling her to get her stuff together and to piss off, to just go no matter how late it was.

"Nope, she couldn't wait to tell me that three weeks here with me, with my bad influence, has turned our son into a potential hooligan, apparently he's only one little step away from standing around on a street corner and waiting to mug an old lady for her pension money, all he needs is the hoodie"

"What? Why? What did he do?" She was trying very hard not to giggle.

"Swore apparently, little bugger said bugger and then told his mother that he learned it from me" He was still laughing "And you didn't escape either"

Her heart sank, Oh shit she'd really thought that she'd got away with it, that Rebecca hadn't actually said anything to him, after all, Simon hadn't actually said that she was fired, had he? So he might just want to talk to her about her next job or something.

"Does she know that I'm here with you, did you tell her?"

"Do I look stupid? Although I don't know why not, it's none of her fucking business as I keep telling you" He still seemed to be finding something seriously amusing "No, apparently at the very least he's going to need elocution lessons for the rest of his life" He caught sight of the offended expression on Molly's face, she knew that she was being dumb to mind but actually it hurt "Oh God, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have repeated that bit, don't get upset stupid woman, no, not you, I don't mean you, her, but I wouldn't hold my breath for an invitation to take Sammie out for the day if I were you"

"That's not fair on Sam is it?"

"Nope, but she was looking for an excuse to try and stop me from seeing him, well until I come to my senses and do what she wants me to anyway"

"What do you think she'd gonna do now?"

"Do you know something? I have no idea"

He got up, still laughing, and opened the bottle of wine that he'd offered her earlier and waved it in her direction again so that this time she nodded, knowing full well that it was her rogue brain cells operating again because it definitely wasn't the best idea she'd ever had but it really had been the shit day from hell, and the relief that she'd got the phone call all wrong was overwhelming.

"I imagine that she'll start the threats about me seeing him again, or about her taking him away, and we'll be back to what a crap dad I am, what with my job and my character, my judgment, oh and just everything else about me, in fact, when I listen to her sometimes I'm fucking amazed that she wants someone like me back in her life" He snorted a laugh "Except that I'm not sure that she does, not really, she just can't stand it when people don't do what she wants them to"

"Good job she don't know about me then, innit? Listen, just cos you're a soldier that don't mean that you're not a good dad, does it? Your job don't stop you" She grinned at him "My Dad, well he's not a soldier, he's not an anything actually cos he don't believe in getting out of bed and going to work, not if someone's 'appy to pay him to sit at home on his bum all day doing bugger-all, but no-one says that he's not a good dad, well, apart from us and we say it all the time but what we think don't count. But no-one says that me brothers and sisters, the little ones, would be best off away from him" She drained her glass of wine and knew she should put her hand over it to stop him topping it up, but didn't "She can't just up and take him away from you cos she's having a bit of a strop, you know that, and I know you don't want Sammie caught up in some _**war**_ between you and his mum, but he needs you in his life not just her"

"I'll know where to come for a character witness, won't I?"

"Yeah, any time"

-OG-

It was about 3.00 in the morning and still pitch dark when she woke up needing the loo, they'd had very long, and after they'd drunk the second bottle of wine, increasingly pissed discussions on just about everything under the sun which had meant that there hadn't been any more debate about who was going to sleep where when they'd finally decided it was time to go to bed, both of them now definitely on the pissed side of sober. They'd sat at the kitchen table and talked for hours about their childhoods and their schools and he'd talked about Sandhurst and then whether or not he was going to introduce her to Harry after she'd decided that as he'd been there as well he must know him, so an introduction obviously wouldn't be a problem, that he wouldn't mind helping her have a pop at Harry, would he? It was something she'd always fancied having a go at, but he'd told her to stop pouting at him because it wasn't going to do any good, and that it wasn't going to happen in a million bloody years. There was no way that he was going to help her have a pop at Harry, even if he did know him, which he didn't, or to help her have a pop, as she called it, at anyone else either.

They'd talked about the food they liked or hated, he loved oysters and had roared with laughter and argued that she didn't know what she was missing when she told him she'd had one once and couldn't think why anyone would eat a dish of salty slime and had shuddered. They'd discussed favourite music, and whether or not they could sing and after some demonstrations agreed that he definitely could and that she definitely couldn't, so that she'd crowed 'see, told you so, I can clear a karaoke bar in no time flat'. They'd talked about sport, had argued about whether football was better than rugby which she knew it was and he wouldn't accept at any price; but they didn't talk about his time in Afghanistan or about him getting injured or the future, about what was going to happen when he went off to Kenya or about her plans to get a job in a proper nursery and they didn't talk about Rebecca or what had happened in the past before Molly knew him.

It was only when they were making their slightly unsteady way up the stairs that Molly admitted to herself how hard he made her heart pound when she looked at him, into his eyes, and how her pulse thudded as her blood raced round her body when he smiled at her and how much she wanted him to kiss her, but he didn't, not the way she wanted him to anyway. His lips touched hers, just very lightly, enough to send bolts of lightning through her, but that was all, they didn't have sex.

They'd just got into his bed and settled down, both of them falling asleep practically before their heads hit their pillows, it had been an exceedingly long day, after a short and very action packed night the night before and they had both drunk too much, but that was then and this was now. As Molly had a pee she was wracking her brains to try and remember whether she'd cleaned her teeth, her mouth tasted as though something had crawled in and died so that it was no wonder he hadn't wanted to kiss her, she must stink. A vigorous scrub with her tooth brush and a bit of a face wash later and she slipped back into bed next to him shifting back into his cuddle by shuffling her knicker clad bum backwards until her back was up against him, she could feel the reassuring evidence of the growing bulge through his boxers that said that he still wanted her, whether she'd behaved like some demented bunny boiler with minging bad breath or not. Slowly his hands made their way up the front of her West Ham shirt until his fingers reached her breasts and he started rubbing his thumbs over her nipples.

"Sorry, did I wake you?"

"Nope, I'm still asleep" He chuckled as his hands moved inside her shirt so that they were caressing the naked skin of her ribs rather than Nan's favourite polyester "Think I might be dreaming and anyway if I'm awake you might move your gorgeous little arse away, so I'm definitely still asleep" He turned her over and bunched her hair up in his hand until he could nuzzle into her neck "Are you still drunk?"

"What difference does that make?"

"I can't take advantage of someone who's drunk"

"Well, in that case no I'm definitely not drunk"She smirked, then giggled as he carried on kissing round her neck "So, does that mean you're gonna take advantage of me?"

"Yup, I'll give you Harry"

"Will you? That's bloody good of you, is that a promise?"

"Lovely, you really know how to be cruel, don't you?"

She had never been more grateful in her life that she'd just brushed her teeth as his mouth hovered tantalisingly close to hers so that she could smell the slightly sour wine on his breath as they breathed the same air and he murmured that he was going to get up and clean his teeth because she'd obviously just cleaned hers and that it wasn't fair and that he must stink. Molly put her hand on the back of his head and pulled it towards hers muttering at him to just shut up and that he didn't stink and please would he just stop messing and kiss her, she longed to feel the warm heaviness of him the way she had before when he was on her, around her and in her, and then she did.

-OG-

As far as Molly was concerned the weekend turned out to be the best she could ever remember, there was a hell of a lot of laughing and the sun was shining so that it was very warm as they went for a long walk in the Woodford Valley. They were holding hands as they walked, and Molly had to keep yelling at him to slow himself down a bit because his legs were so much longer than hers that she couldn't keep up without running every so often and he kept on telling her to put more effort in as he tried to shorten his stride as well as relentlessly teasing her about being a little townie with a townie's attitude to trees and fields and especially to the dear little lambs that weren't so little anymore. He pointed out that she wasn't a vegetarian and that this was where all that delicious roast lamb started out, so that eventually she told him to shut up because she'd just converted to being a veggie and it was going to be bleeding nut roasts from now on.

They walked down to the river at the bottom where she admitted that she wasn't that keen on water, eventually admitting that she couldn't actually swim and waited for the laugh which didn't come. Instead he put his arm round her shoulders and pulled her into his side, hugging her and kissing the top of her head then telling her that she should have told him instead of making loads of excuses about not having the right gear with her and not wanting to buy anything new when he and Sam had wanted her to go swimming with them. They found a pub for lunch and he kissed the tip of her nose before they sat at their table, simply not caring whether there was anyone in the pub who knew him, and then they'd spent most of Saturday night making love, touching and kissing and holding each other very tight, both aware that they were once again in 'last time' territory.

And all weekend there was this feeling nudging at the back of her brain that made her want to tell him, so that she'd actually come close to it a couple of times but then chickened out, she now understood exactly what he'd meant when he'd said that he hadn't told her because he just wanted her to be happy.

-OG-

They'd been bickering ever since finishing lunch, they both knew that she couldn't stay Sunday night, that he was back on duty at sparrow's fart the next day and that she had to present herself in Simon's office at 9 o'clock sharp and didn't dare be late in case that was tempting fate. Molly contested that she'd be perfectly fine getting home on the train because she was a big girl now, but he wanted to drive her, something that couldn't happen as far as she was concerned. What the fuck would she say to avoid taking him into the flat? And that would only happen over her dead body, not because she was ashamed, not of him nor the flat or the family or anything, but because she was shit-scared that one of them might say something.

But all that was before he dropped his bombshell and she supposed that shouldn't have been surprised, but she was, shocked to the core, she hadn't seen this coming at all.

"What you trying to say here, you telling me that we're over? Are you dumping me?" She looked at him as he looked down at his feet, his face expressionless "Oh shit, he is"

"I'm not dumping you, it's just better this way while I'm away, you know it is"

"How do you make that one out? Its shit, and you know it" No matter how hard she tried to keep a lid on it, her eyes were rapidly filling with tears, he was definitely saying that this was over, that they were over almost before they'd begun.

"It's not the right time now, but that doesn't mean it's never going to be, I want you to be free to get on with your life, I mean you're twenty three years old, Molly, you've got your whole life in front of you, and I'm thirty two, with baggage" He grimaced "A lot of it, so while I'm away I don't want you to be sitting there worrying about me and if you're still on your own when I get back, which I doubt, well ….. but I don't want you to call or text or write, it would make it too difficult, not enough is far worse than nothing at all"

"Well, there's nothing I can say then is there? Tell you what Charles, I've been dumped before but never quite like this" She shrugged, wanting to say that she had baggage as well, that he didn't have a monopoly "I don't know what the actual fuck is going on 'ere, but I'm not Rebecca and I don't give a shit where you are, well of course I care but you know what I mean, and whether I'm dumped or not I don't want anyone else, so just be bloody careful out there, don't go getting yourself shot again or nothing and come back in one piece"

"You be careful too, I'd rather deal with terrorist insurgents any day than a bunch of other people's feral kids" He was trying to smile but it didn't meet his eyes so that it ended up being a bit of a grimace "And I'm not dumping you as you put it, I just think that it's better this way"

"Okay, well, if you say so, not much else I can say is there?"

Her tone of voice made it obvious that she didn't agree with him, but knew that there was nothing on earth that she could say that would change his mind and she needed to keep hold of a small shred of dignity so that she wouldn't scream and bawl and beg.

"If I can ever do anything ….."

"You got a tardis?"

-OG-

A dry-eyed and shell-shocked Molly had got her own way and gone home on the train from Salisbury. There'd been no more discussions on the way to the station, there didn't seem to be anything else to say, so they had just kissed each other on the cheek and she'd got on the almost empty Sunday afternoon service and looked out of the window at the sun-lit countryside without really seeing any of it at all. She'd just sat and wondered how the hell that had happened. How was it even possible to get it so wrong, to go from euphoria to shitty nothing in the space of a couple of minutes without even having any sort of row for fuck sake?

-OG-


	15. Chapter 15

_**A/N: Decided to update as the last Chapter didn't exactly have the Bank Holiday feel-good factor at the end of it, I mean it was okay for me because I knew what was coming next, and as this one was ready to go, all but …..Anyway the next chapter will now obviously take a few days – but I hope you enjoy this.**_

 _ **-OG-**_

"Ah yes, Molly, good of you to be here on time, so now tell me, what the fuck have you been up to this time?" Simon leaned back in his chair and lifted his eyebrows shaking his head resignedly a bit like a weary headmaster "You really are more fucking trouble than you're worth, aren't you?"

"What? I don't know what you're on Simon but I haven't been up to nothing, well except for working hard"

Simon shuffled some papers around on his desk until he found the A4 pad he was looking for which she could see was literally covered in notes scribbled in his distinctive green ink and then he slowly read them through either to refresh his memory or to make her even more nervous, she suspected the latter.

"Well, that's certainly not the way the client tells it, she is not a bit happy with you or with us for that matter, says she's not going to pay the bill unless I get rid of you and the sooner I do it the better, and sit down for fuck sake, you're making the place look untidy standing there" He paused and leaned back in his chair steepling his fingers in front of him and putting his index fingers against his pursed lips as he contemplated her now sitting bolt upright in the chair opposite "Then, and _only then_ , she says she might, and _only might_ you understand, consider paying us what she owes, she'll think about it" He shook his head.

"I have no bloody idea what you're talking about, what did she say that I did? Cos I'll tell you something right now, Simon, I didn't do anything, nothin' at all, I just looked after the kid and apart from anything else, that woman is a raving nut job what's in the middle of some war with her old man"

She'd spent a great deal of the previous night thinking about what she'd do and how she'd do it if the worst came to the worst, just in case she needed to, and that was exactly what had just happened. Thinking about how to play it had also stopped her going into total melt down over him, if she gave in and cried she might never be able to stop. She'd finally decided that the truth, if not all of it, would be better than a fairy tale because it wouldn't be so hard to stick to and now that she was sitting here she sensed that Simon wouldn't be on Rebecca's side if the silly cow had started buggering him about over owing him money.

"Hmmm, let me see now" He looked back at his notes pretending that he was checking up on the details whereas they both knew that whatever Rebecca had said and whatever he was going to say to her next was already indelibly imprinted on his brain "She says that you shagged her old man and that the kiddie was there in the house with the pair of you, that he saw what was going on when he walked in when the two of you were at it and that the little boy told her all about it when he got home"

"Well that makes her a bloody lying cow for starters" The indignation was easy, Rebecca _was_ a bloody lying cow or at least she was well exaggerating and Molly was sick of being meek "I don't reckon she ever intended to pay up and now she's just looking for an excuse and she's using you or maybe she's using me, I dunno, but she knew all about Cindi and Eddie didn't she, cos you told her. It never happened, Simon, never would have happened, not in a million years even if he was George bloody Clooney, which he's not, you know that she's made all that up don't you cos that's what you told her had happened before, well, sort of, and it weren't true then neither"

Molly had already made up her mind that there was no way she was going to let Rebecca win, there was something about having lost everything that she wanted anyway that stopped her caring about whether what she was saying was bloody well true or not. Giving no fucks at all made her feel like she was superwoman, that she could lie through her bloody teeth, say that she hadn't laid a finger on him or the other way round and get away with it. There was absolutely no proof anyway that anything had happened between them, okay maybe Sam could give evidence that she'd kissed his dad, or rather that his dad had kissed her, but no-one was going to ask him to swear on the bible, were they? And apart from that there was just Rebecca bloody James or whatever her maiden name was and she might well be posh and well up herself, but she was a far bigger slapper than Molly would ever be.

"She's lying to you Simon, she's trying to involve us, you know the Agency, by sayin' that her old man, who by the way is not her old man anymore, they're divorced so he's allowed to do what he wants, but she's sayin' that he had a bit of a thing with the hired help cos they're having a barney over Sammie, their kid, and whether or not she can take him off to the States to live with her and her new bloke" She shrugged and pulled a rueful face "She's using us and stitching you up for the bill at the same time"

Simon's face was inscrutable as he examined his manicured finger nails and pushed at his cuticles then looked across his desk at her and she realised that he had absolutely no intention of firing her, he probably knew that actually he couldn't, not legally, and anyhow he was most likely a bit worried that if it got out of hand it would end up in the tabloid press again meaning more unwelcome publicity for the Agency, although Molly was sure that that was the very last thing Rebecca would want, given her track record for not being able to keep her knickers on.

"Well, we'll see about that, but right now I need to have a look and see what we've got that's suitable for you at the moment Molly, it might be a good idea of we look out of town a bit, don't you think?" He shuffled around on his desk and then got up and went to his office door to see if Janice his bossy wife was sitting at her desk, which she wasn't, before finally telling Molly to go and get herself a cuppa but to hang about a bit so that he could check. She thought that she should really do the decent thing and tell him that she didn't want another one of these sort of jobs, that she was going home after she'd finished here to look on-line and see what day nursery jobs were hopefully going, something that he would tell her with a shudder was proof that she'd finally lost her bloody marbles altogether.

-OG-

"Molls, there's someone at the door for you"

Her mum sounded a bit flustered as she yelled up the stairs to where Molly was on her stomach on the bottom bunk busily filling in the "lying through your teeth" sections of on-line applications for several local authority nurseries. She was making up suitable hobbies and interests, like reading and jogging and swimming 'n that, had even considered including knitting, as she wondered why they bothered to ask, surely no-one ever told the bleeding truth and put clubbing and drinking, 'n picking up blokes and shopping in Top Shop, did they? All of the vacancies she was applying for were for jobs that only paid just slightly above minimum wage, so what difference did it make what she did in her spare time, she wouldn't have any anyway, would probably have to moonlight in another Carlo's somewhere if she could find one, but still, she had to start somewhere, although maybe Simon had a point when he said she'd lost her marbles.

He'd done everything in his power to get her to change her mind, finally playing his trump card by saying that if she went straight away it would look as though Rebecca had won, and when he saw her wavering at that thought followed it up by asking whether she'd thought about what the fuck she was going to live on until she got another job. In the end she'd agreed to go to an interview for a short-term day nanny job for some woman in Bermondsey who'd already got two small kids and who was up the spout with twins so needed a bit of a hand during the day, but it was not live-in, she was never, ever going to do that again, hell would freeze over first.

"Who is it Mum? I'm busy"

"I dunno do I? Whoever it is they're outside with yer Dad, 'n I'm busy too you know, bleeding veg won't peel themselves, you bloody kids are all the same, think dinner cooks itself"

"Sorry, I'll come and help you in a minute, let me get rid of whoever it is first"

She pounded down the stairs jumping the last two with all the grace of an inebriated donkey and then stopped dead in the doorway, he was standing outside on the walkway next to where her dad was smoking his roll-up, and wearing that camouflage army stuff, the first time she'd seen him looking like a real soldier. Both he and Dave were bending forwards leaning with their elbows on the top of the balustrade wall and looking down into the street and although they were standing in silence it was a friendly sort of silence.

"What on earth are you doing here?" She swallowed, hoping that she didn't sound as much like Donald Duck as she thought she did, her voice sounded very peculiar to her but he was the very last person she'd expected to see "Where's the war?"

"Sorry, didn't have time to go home and change" He looked down at his clothes with an apologetic smile "I came to see if you're okay"

"Don't matter about the" She waved a finger in the direction of his combats and giggled slightly "As long as you don't frighten the natives, so" She took a deep breath "Why wouldn't I be okay?"

"Can we go for a walk or something, we need to have a chat" He had this tentative smile on his face as though he was half expecting her to tell him to piss off back to where he'd come from as he glanced towards Dave who wasn't even pretending not to listen, he was watching them with an expression of avid curiosity on his face.

"Dad" Molly looked across to where her father was standing on the far side of Charles, making Dave look away and pretend to be deeply interested in something that was going on in the street below "Do me a bloody favour will you and go and help mum or something" She jerked her head gesturing towards the house and took no notice of Dave's muttered comments about how the last time he'd checked he was the dad and she was the kid and then shook her head at the fairly shocked expression on Charles' face at the tone of voice she'd just used to speak to her father "Aren't they open in a minute?"

"Got no cash Molls"

"Got any money on you?" Molly turned to a shocked Charles who nodded and took out his wallet "Lend me a tenner" He watched with a degree of incredulity as she extracted a ten pound note from his wallet and handed it to Dave, and then remembered what she'd said to him before about her father, as she told her parent not to be a greedy bugger cos it was all he was getting. Her father's eyes had lit up at the sight of the rest of the money in the wallet but he then took himself off with a disappointed backwards glance at the wallet in her hand still clutching the money she'd given him as Molly yelled after him to go and put some bleeding trousers on while he was at it.

"Thanks" She handed him his wallet back "Other people have to bribe the kids to go the pictures or some'ing, we have to bribe him to make him piss off, usually down the pub. I'll get my purse and pay you back in a minute"

"Don't worry about it, look, I had this phone call this morning when I was out trying to get the lads to put some effort into their run, I think I was the only one who kept up the exercise while we were on leave, everyone else appears to have spent their time in the fish and chip shop or the pub, or both, it's always so much harder if you don't ….."

"Charles, phone call?"

Molly interrupted, she knew he was waffling on a bit because something was awkward but was glad to hear that she sounded like her, that she appeared to have recovered the proper use of her vocal cords.

"Right, the phone call, yup" He put his hand on the back of his neck and tugged at his hair then chewed at the inside corner of his bottom lip before looking at her "She told me what she'd been up to, Rebecca I mean, well, who else? Sometimes I wonder about her …." He laughed slightly as Molly muttered 'only sometimes?' "I am so sorry Molly, I know that you want to move on, but not like this, not by losing your job because someone's got a problem with me, that's not right, although I'm not sure that whatshisname, Simon? can do that, can fire you for something that was nothing to do with anything you did"

"Course he can fire me, it's his bloody agency so he makes the rules, but you can stop worrying, he never, I mean he's not gonna fire me, she well pissed him off cos he don't take kindly to being threatened, especially if someone's threatening him over money what they owe him" She shrugged "I denied all of it anyhow, so she'd have to prove it and she can't can she, well not unless you tell her cos I'm not going to"

"Right, well that's okay then, although you didn't have to deny anything, you didn't do anything wrong did you? We are, were, allowed to have … feelings for each other, we're both single and it doesn't matter what Rebecca thinks, it's none of her fucking business" There was something about the way he said it that told her that he'd used it as an excuse to come here, to see her, and her heart leapt, he could have phoned or texted or anything to check that she wasn't in a crumpled heap somewhere, bottle of Vodka in one hand and a box of tissues in the other. Then looking at him standing next to her and not meeting her eyes, she suddenly knew, shit, shit, SHIT.

"What else did she say Charles? What else did she tell you? And don't say nothing cos I can see there is"

"Never mind about what she told me, why didn't you tell me?" He leaned his elbow on the balustrade and then looked sideways up at her, before he carried on without waiting for her to give him a reason "What was it you called it? Being fucking economical with the truth, that's if it is true, is it?"

"Is what true? I mean, what did she tell you? That there was all this shit in the papers, well yeah that bit's true, the shit-sheets were full of it, but it were all crap, nothing what they said was true, not a single bleeding word of it" She bit her lip, she was actually doing her best not to cry, could this possibly get any worse? "She knew all about it, said that it didn't matter, that it didn't make no difference because you and her, well there was nothing between you anymore so that, well, anyway that it was no big deal"

"So you told her all about it but you didn't want to tell me? Well thanks for that" He raked his bottom lip with his teeth before looking up at her again, pushing his tongue into his cheek.

"What, you think I told her?" Molly pulled a face and bit her bottom lip "I never told her, Simon did"

She didn't consider for a second telling him that she'd been on the point of coming clean and unburdening it all to Rebecca anyway because she'd thought that the other woman was so nice and so lovely and everything which just went to show what a bleeding great judge of character she was.

"What really happened? I mean, you obviously don't have to tell me if you don't want to, but I can't believe all that stuff that she told me, the stuff that you were apparently involved in"

"Really, are you standing there telling me that you don't believe all that shit what was in the papers? Cos that would make you just about the only person in the whole bloody world what don't believe it, well apart from me mum 'n the family, and I'm not even sure about them"

"Rubbish, and of course I don't believe it, what do you take me for?" He smiled making her heart skip a beat and shrugged "And it didn't sound like you at all"

"What do you mean it don't sound like me?" Suddenly Molly began to giggle, just over twenty four hours ago she'd been in bed with this man and they'd been all over each other and now here he was saying that it didn't sound like her to be hopping into bed with someone "Sorry, I can't help it, well, what with you and me … and I thought that you'd think … all sorts, cos you don't know me, do you, not really"

"You only have to see the tip of an iceberg to know it's an iceberg don't you?"

"You calling me an iceberg?"

"Not according to the tabloid press you're not" He chuckled at the way she blushed scarlet, then laughed aloud at the expression on her face "Molly, it's only words that's all, just words, it's not as though any of them know you, is it? And you and me, well that is totally different isn't it?"

-OG-


	16. Chapter 16

"How was it different? I thought …. still don't really matter what I thought does it, not now" She shrugged "Are you telling me that she didn't tell you to read all the stuff on-line? I'm sure you can still get it if you want, not sure about Twitter or Facebook, haven't looked but I'd be surprised if she didn't tell you, wouldn't have thought she'd of missed a trick like that"

Molly shrugged knowing that she was annoyed with him and that it showed, but it wasn't his fault that his ex-wife was such a bitch, well not really his fault even though there was a bit of her that was hopping mad at him so that she wanted to blame him for everything being such a shitty mess, in between desperately wanting him to put his arms round her and hug her and say that everything was okay and that he was sorry and that he hadn't meant it and that everything was the way it had been before yesterday.

"It was horrible there was even some …. witch who started a petition thing to get me banned everywhere in the whole bloody world and none of it, none of it were true, not one single solitary bloody word of it , none of that crap that Cindi Whatsits, as Simon called her, said, none of it"

She was now struggling not to give in and cry as she re-lived the frustration of the injustice, she could hear the thickness of insipient tears in her voice as she did her level best to sound as if she was unaffected.

"I were just doing me job with Velvet and Silk, poor little buggers, and then in he come and pounced on me" She shuddered theatrically at the memory and made a face motioning to put two fingers down her throat simulating that the thought made her want to vomit "And it was horrible, he was horrible, I never even liked him, well, didn't know him really, I'd hardly even spoke to him before, and he was totally minging" She pulled a face wrinkling her nose up "It was like he hadn't had a shower for ….. well, forever ….worse than me dad, and that's sayin' some'ing, 'n his breath smelt like a bleeding ashtray, uurggh, and then she comes barrelling in and starts all this yelling at me, although they did a fair bit of that anyway, not at me, don't mean that, but at each other, and next thing I know she's talking to the press and I'm some sort of bloody home wrecker"

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"Well it's not that easy to tell someone that you're an epic fail, is it?"

"You're not a fail, that's the last thing you are" He scratched his head then frowned "Why on earth did you read it? You should have just ignored it, why didn't you?"

"That's easy for someone else to say, innit? Believe me, it's not easy when it's you what there're talking about, and I couldn't fight it cos I didn't know where to start and it seemed like everyone wanted to believe her 'n no-one even asked me for my side and anyway Simon told me to, what was it he said? Keep a dignified silence and just hang on in there, that it would all go away when the next victim came along, bloody hard though"

Now as she looked back she could see that okay, she'd known that Rebecca was using her in some way, Charles had practically said as much, she just wasn't sure how, even now, and that there were things going on that she hadn't fully understood, still didn't for that matter, but she was suspicious now that Cindi and Eddie had used her as well so that it looked like that was part of the reason these people picked her, they all seemed to think she was stupid enough or naïve enough, and they probably had a point there, or maybe that she'd be grateful enough for the job to let them get away with it.

With hindsight she could also see that Simon's advice had had its roots in self-interest, he'd been much more concerned about any negative publicity involving his agency than he was in looking out for her, mind you, she supposed she couldn't really blame him, it was fair enough given the circumstances and hindsight is bloody wonderful.

"The people who wrote things about you, who put things on-line, were any of them your friends, did any of them know what really happened, did they even know you?"

"Well, some of them, yeah, and some asked me, but …" Molly shrugged "They weren't really friends, just nosy buggers what sort of knew me a little bit or used to, and all they wanted was details, like whether or not he'd got a big dick or if he was any good at it, as if I'd know, although to be fair, the ones who put all the nasty stuff on there ….. I'd never even heard of them"

"Listen. To. Me." He turned round from where he was leaning forward against the wall and looking over at the street below, straightening up till he was standing over her looking down into her tear-filled green eyes, and began tapping his index finger very lightly against the centre of her chest in order to emphasise what he was saying "People who know you, the people who care about you, well they wouldn't have believed a fucking word of it, would they? Not for a single minute and as for the others, well, they're just sad and not worth worrying about so who the fuck cares what they think, if they can think, remember, _it's only words"_

"I wish me Nan could hear you, she's not here at the minute, but she writes to the Mail every bloody day trying to get them to tell my side but they keep on shittin' well ignoring her" She gave a short laugh "Actually, I hope they carry on ignoring her cos I don't think I want it all dragged up again even to tell my side and Nan, well, she says stuff like _she speaks as she finds,_ but what she really means is that she's bloody rude, and she says _she doesn't stand for any nonsense_ which means she's _unbelievably_ bloody rude, so they wouldn't print what she said anyway, or most likely they couldn't case they get sued"

They both chuckled as Charles put his hand on her cheek, cupping her face so that she leaned into his palm as he muttered something vague about meeting her Nan one day as a pregnant silence descended between them, a silence that was full of avoiding one another's eyes, of unexpressed emotions and unspoken words, neither of them comfortable as they both cast around for something to say to break the silence.

"Does this mean, well, what with you being here like this, does it mean that you might gonna …. dunno, 'ave changed your mind? I mean it don't matter if you haven't, well it obviously does, but I need to know, Charles, and it was still well nice of you to come all this way to make sure I was alright" She paused "How the fuck did you know where I lived anyhow?"

"Called the agency, asked"

"What? And they told you?" He nodded "Just like that?" He nodded again "Bloody brilliant, look, I know this is …. but I just wondered …. " She took a deep breath, there was absolutely no point in putting this off, if things were still the same she needed to know, she would have to get on with it whatever, but it was still one of the hardest things she'd ever done "Am I still dumped?"

"Oh Molly" He looked at her, slowly shaking his head from side to side as he raised one eyebrow "Look, it's complicated" He scratched his head, a worried frown etched between his eyebrows "I believed it was the right thing to do, although it clearly wasn't, but I never intended for it to end like that, to _dump_ you, as you put it"

"Didn't you? Made a bloody good job of it for something you didn't intend then didn't you?"

He put his hands on her shoulders, then put his hands down and lifted her arms up, tucking them round behind his neck "I thought it was the right thing because I've known for years that one of the worst things I could do would be to get emotionally involved with someone and then to go off on tour" He paused obviously looking for the right words, then shrugged "I was determined it wasn't going to happen again"

"Do I matter to you?"

He raised his eyebrows and pulled a slightly exasperated face before carrying on with what he'd been saying "Of course you bloody do, I thought it was for the best, well, that there would be nothing in your way, no promises you might regret, nothing to stop you being happy if some Harry look-alike came along. I didn't want you to feel tied to someone who wasn't even fucking there, someone that you couldn't rely on if you needed them, I wanted you to feel free to do …..…" He shrugged expressively "Mind you, if that happened before I got back I'm not sure I'd want to know about it" He paused "And you never know, could have been Harry, although I think I'd have known if that was the case, the tabloids would have a fucking field day"

"Yeah, I can see the headlines now" She snorted "But you do know that that's total bollocks, don't you? Absolute crap, it's not gonna happen, Charles, I'm not Rebecca, and before you say it, six months is not that bloody long, well, yeah, alright it is, it's a fucking lifetime, but I don't want no-one else not even the Ginger Ninja, thanks very much"

"That's not what you said the other night"

"I were pissed the other night"

"You said you weren't"

"I were lying" She giggled "Anyhow what about you?"

"Nope" He shook his head pretending to give the idea some deep consideration "I don't fancy Harry, so I don't think it would matter how much effort I put in, any relationship we had would have to be purely platonic"

"Oh yeah funny, although I don't s'pose he'd fancy you much either" She paused "You know what I thought, don't you? I thought it was just you had a good time, a bit of a one-night stand sort of thing that lasted a couple of days but was history once the weekend was over"

"What? Never"

"Well how was I s'posed to know, you really hurt me you know" She bit her lip as he looked down at the floor "I didn't mean you and Harry, I meant you sure this wasn't about you being free to find someone else? Someone more suitable, maybe a soldier or someone, you know, blonde hair, legs up to her bloody armpits, someone who talks like she's got a gob full of marbles like you do" She was still chewing at her bottom lip as he smiled and caught his own bottom lip with his teeth, trying hard not to laugh aloud at her description of his so-called 'ideal' girl "One who buys jeans that cost so much it makes me brain melt just thinking about it"

"Girls like that? Ten a penny in the British army, one round every corner" He laughed at the expression on her face "I don't think so and it's not allowed, it's against regulations, and even if it was, why would I want someone else? And your jeans look fine to me" He paused, still smirking "Mind you, you've got such a gorgeous little arse that I quite like it when you take them off" He put his hands up and pretended to be warming them round her face as her blush intensified until she felt as if she was on fire "I quite like it when you blush like that as well"

"Molls, Mum says ask your friend to come in" Jade interrupted them, bellowing from inside the house even though Molly was sure that her mother would have told her sister to go outside and ask "What?" There was a short silence as her sister obviously listened to something their mother was saying "She says she's putting the kettle on and to ask him if he'd like a cuppa?"

"Nah, tell Mum he's not stopping, he's gotta go in a minute"

"Have I? Oh, okay" Charles pulled a surprised face as he replaced her arms around his neck, and started running the backs of his fingers up and down her forearms making electric shocks run through them, Molly had snatched her arms away when Jade started yelling as if she didn't want her sister to see "Well yes I have got to go shortly, but …"

"Believe me you don't want to go in, and you definitely don't want a cuppa, it's not like that poncey coffee you drink, tea bag does us, oh, and I don't blush" She twined her fingers where he used to have curls on the back of his neck, but where there was now a brutally short hair-cut so that she stroked what felt more like stubble as he moved his head towards her hands "And you still haven't said, so am I?"

"Molly" He shook his head almost despairingly, a note of exasperation was back in his voice as he put a hand on her face and smoothed the stray tendrils of hair back behind her ears "When you got on that bloody train yesterday, God, was that only yesterday? All I could think was that, well, you're the only thing that matters to me, so of course you're not dumped, I" There was a tiny almost imperceptible hesitation in his voice before he went on "I love you"

"Do you?" She was biting at her bottom lip again as tears started to gather making her blink madly as they threatened to spill out of the corners of her eyes "You've got a bleeding funny way of showing it"

"I know, I'll make it up to you, I promise … and yes you do blush"

He bent forward and lightly brushed his lips against hers, then ran his thumb over her cheekbone making her stomach flip over and her heart miss a beat as she swallowed convulsively "So I should bloody well think" Happiness was starting to bubble inside her, so that she was suddenly desperate to put her head back and to laugh out loud. She grabbed his hand, pulling him towards the front door "Come on, come and meet Mum"

-OG-

Belinda's eyes had widened considerably when they'd walked in together hand in hand, as usual her kitchen was cluttered, steamy and desperately untidy, but it was something that she normally didn't even notice. The unexpected appearance of a very tall and exceedingly good-looking bloke in the chaos of her kitchen meant that she got very flustered and began to pick things up before looking around for somewhere else to put them, then putting them down again where she'd found them.

"Sorry about the mess … " She waved her arm around indicating a room that to Charles' army trained neat freak eyes looked a complete tip. There were saucepans bubbling away on the hob creating clouds of steam, piles of washing up in the sink together with clutter on every available surface as well as an iron and ironing board standing ready in the corner, overflowing laundry basket on top.

He shrugged and shook his head indicating that it wasn't a problem "I'm sorry to just turn up like this, Mrs Dawes, I'm Charles, a friend of Molly's"

"Hello Charles, I'm Belinda, I'm Molly's mum, Oh, silly me, you already know that don't you?"

They didn't stay long, Charles declined Belinda's offer of staying for some of her 'just pot luck' dinner as well as saying that he hadn't really got time to stay for a cuppa, he remembered what Molly had said or rather the tone of voice she'd used when she'd said it, but he wasn't exaggerating when he told them that he couldn't stay, in fact he wasn't even supposed to have left the base while they were making final preparations for the tour.

The whole time that they were talking to her mum Molly was completely aware of the way her hand was still firmly enveloped in his long slender fingers and of the way he kept on squeezing it so that she squeezed back, this was the first time they'd shown any display of affection for one another in front of someone who knew them, and she loved it. Molly was giggling inside as she watched him charm the pants off her mother, not by doing anything sleazy or slimy or by coming onto her or anything, but just by being himself as she saw the way Belinda got all flustered and fluttery and how she kept on gazing up at him with wide eyes and then running her hand through her hair before tucking it back behind her ears, and the way she kept glancing down at their linked hands and smiling at him approvingly.

"Where's Nan?"

"Gone to some new Bingo place with whatsername, Irene, that woman as lives next to her, she's going to be well narked with you, young lady, she'll be bloody livid that you never told her that Charles here was coming round this afternoon and now she's missed him"

"Molly didn't know that I was coming, Mrs Dawes, but I hope there'll be other opportunities to meet her Nan, as long as Molly lets me"

"Belinda, I've told you, its Belinda, and yer Nan's gonna love him isn't she Molls? Loves a bloke in uniform" Belinda laughed and ran her hand through her hair once more as Molly was tempted to say 'Just like you then Mum' but didn't.

"Yeah, bus conductors, traffic wardens, all sorts, she's not fussy but Charles don't always wear this lot Mum 'n" Molly plucked at the sleeve of his combats "I've already told him that she'll eat him alive" She giggled "I'm not sure he believed me, but he will"

He put his arm round her shoulder and pulled her into his side kissing the top of her head, something he'd done several times now, it was possessive and territorial …. and she loved it.

-OG-

 _ **A/N: Thank you for the reviews, couldn't possibly do it without you. This is not quite finished yet, Chapter 17 is nearly ready so asap, maybe tomorrow if I get enough time between now and then, real life, dogs and heroes,permitting.**_


	17. Chapter 17

"Am I gonna see you before you go?"

"Nope, unfortunately not"

They were standing by his car facing each other and holding onto one another's hands, he was as reluctant to leave as Molly was to let him go, even though it was just delaying the inevitable and was, in fact, prolonging the agony for both of them "Apart from anything else, my lease runs out Wednesday so I'm homeless and we're not allowed to have partners stay in barracks, it's against regulations" Molly was mentally biting the back of her knuckles the way she'd once done with Sandy when he'd smiled at them in Carlo's, partner? He'd just called her his PARTNER "I don't suppose there's room for me to come and stay here either is there? Not that I'd be able to stay the night anyway, not unless I want to be on a charge"

"I could lend you some Marigolds if you want" She giggled as he laughed and shook his head "Anyway you most likely wouldn't want to share a bottom bunk with me with Bella on the top one screeching at us to keep the bloody noise down"

"I have no idea what you're referring to Miss Dawes, I told you once before I don't make any noise"

"Must be thinking of someone else then"

"Lovely, I hope you don't mean that"

It had been on the tip of her tongue to suggest that she book a TraveLodge, but if he couldn't be out all night, she wasn't sure that nipping into one of them for a couple of hours wasn't just a little bit ….. sort of wrong, tempting, very tempting but definitely a bit tacky.

"You know, the army used to be my whole life, I was never happier than when I was off on tour, living out of a Bergen, I wouldn't even consider the settled sort of life that Rebecca wanted but that was before I met you, and I know we haven't been together very long, but it's been long enough for everything to change and I don't want to go"

"I know, I don't want you to go neither, but I know that you've got to, so" She took a deep breath "Piss off and go and do your …. whatever it is you're gonna do, but just don't get any more bloody war wounds, okay? You got enough of them already, I know cos I've seen them"

She could hear Sandy's voice in her head saying that men like him loved to be heroes "And don't be a bleeding hero either, I know what you're like"

"I'll be careful I promise, and I'll be back just before Christmas" He bent his head and kissed her, a last long lingering kiss "Have you ever been to Bath, you know where I come from, where my parents live?"

"No, why would I"

The significance of what he was saying was momentarily lost on her, all she could think was, its June the bloody 1st tomorrow, Christmas, bleeding Christmas? that's a lifetime away.

"Their house is magical at Christmas, makes me feel like a kid again and it's my turn to have Sammie this year, well unless she plays dirty, so what do you think? Christmas in Bath, you, me, Sammie? Oh and my parents of course but they don't take up much room"

-OG-

She'd simply stood and watched as he drove away, hands dangling heavily down her sides until she tucked her thumbs into the front pockets of her jeans, jeans that were Primark not Prada. It was only when his car was completely out of sight that she remembered all the things that she'd wanted to ask, whether the embargo on phone calls and texts or even letters was still in place, and whether she'd be allowed to go to the airport place whatever it was called, to see him off, she supposed not, or whether she could go there to meet him when he got back, which she was determined she was going to do, no matter how difficult it might be.

Right now, though, she needed to go back indoors and face the Spanish Inquisition from her mother when all she really wanted to do was to go upstairs and lie on her bed and think about all the things he'd said and to hug them to her chest, that he loved her, that she was his partner, HIS PARTNER for fuck sake. She also needed to think long and hard about how best to get out of this bleeding invitation to spend Christmas with him and Sam, Christmas with him and Sam was one thing, and it would be lovely, but in Bath? With his parents? She'd need to dream up some sort of reasonable excuse because she'd said yes she would love to, of course she had, one good thing was that there was still plenty of time between now and then to come up with something that would help her to get out of it.

-OG-

The days until he actually went were never-ending, she found it hard to think about anything else other than keep on checking her phone every few minutes looking for a message that didn't come, then composing messages and texts that she didn't send, getting some pleasure from the words even though she deleted them and then wondered whether he was missing her as much as she was missing him. It was easier once she knew he'd actually gone, when she finally admitted to herself that a bit of her had been expecting him to just turn up without warning so that she hadn't wanted to go out, she was too afraid that if she did she might miss him, well, except for going to work and she had no choice about that, but once there was no possibility of that happening, she relaxed.

Her new job was actually the best she'd had since she'd begun working for Simon, the kids were easy, happy little buggers whose mum had no hang-ups, no 'issues' at all, well, except for being very pregnant again which was something she hadn't planned on apparently, and with two this time as she kept on saying with a face like she couldn't believe her luck, or lack of it, as she patted her belly and complained about not being able to varnish her toe nails. It was a nice, comfortable happy house and the kids were just normal kids, good most of the time, and bloody awful the rest and if it hadn't been for the fact that she hadn't heard a dicky bird from Charles she would have been happy. Her confidence in him and what he'd said was draining away bit by bit, she kept on hearing him saying _"It's only words"_ and it didn't help that her mum kept asking if she'd heard from him yet and then carefully not making a comment when she had to say that she hadn't.

She couldn't even visualise what it was like for him out there, didn't even know exactly where he was or what the fuck he was actually doing there so that she couldn't tell herself it was because it was the arse end of nowhere with a crap postal service and no phone connection. Well she could and she did, but underneath she knew that she was making things up to stop herself feeling bloody miserable and lonely because she hadn't heard from him. She still kept writing texts that she didn't send, it was obvious now that he'd meant what he'd said and intended to stick to all that no contact bollocks.

It was nearly a month since her ladyship had made her threats and Molly had heard nothing, not from her, which was no big surprise, but nothing from Simon either so that she presumed that the snotty cow had paid her bill, she was pretty sure that Simon would have been onto her if he hadn't been able to sort it, he wasn't the type to just let her forget all about it. She'd had two interviews for jobs in Council Day Nurseries and was pretty hopeful about one of them although sod's law dictated that it was the one that was the longest trek from home so it would cost the most to get there and back, but she still kept telling herself that she had to start somewhere ….

The text came out of the blue when she was sitting on a baking hot and very crowded bus going home from work and it was the last thing she'd expected as she'd sat there wishing whoever it was who didn't believe in deodorant would either go and get a bleeding wash or go and sit somewhere else when the screen on her phone lit up. It was just one line, all the way from Kenya, but it took her straight back to sitting at a kitchen table in Amesbury sinking a couple of bottles of red with this gorgeous, funny bloke that she'd been bleeding nuts about, well still was, a bloke who'd been proving to her that he could sing by serenading her with some Robert Plant song that she'd never even heard of before that day, actually she'd never even heard of Robert Plant either but hadn't admitted that to him.

" _Please read the letter that I wrote_ " xx

She couldn't remember the rest of the words now, just that one line about reading the letter that he'd wrote so spent the rest of the journey home struggling to recall the lyrics, because the bus seemed to take forever jerking and trundling along and then stopping at every bloody stop so that hordes of very slow people could get on and off and even though she knew that the letter might not even be there yet, she had no idea when it had been sent or how long it would take to arrive, anticipation and impatience were fizzing away in the pit of her stomach. She was so excited that she caught herself grinning madly at complete strangers on the bus, at the same time as wanting to yell to just hurry up, so that most of them glared at her with deep suspicion, or looked the other way as soon as they caught her eye, everyone knew that only nutters smile at other people on public transport in London.

"Any post for me Mum?"

"On the table"

The disappointment was intense as she looked at the two official-looking brown window envelopes and a printed envelope from the agency, which she knew would contain her pay advice slip thingy, but not the envelope she was so desperately looking for.

"Nothing else?"

She knew that that was a bloody silly question, that no-one would be hiding it from her for fuck sake, why would they? and she'd already told herself over and over that it might take a while to get to her, but that didn't stop her wanting to weep and wail and bawl that it wasn't fair that it wasn't there.

"Why, you expecting summat?"

"Nah, its okay, just wondered"

Molly trudged upstairs, all the elation had drained away and she badly wanted to cry even though she knew she was being a dipshit, then opened the first of the brown envelopes which was a 'thanks but no thanks' from the first nursery, the one she'd been most hopeful about so that she assumed that the other one was the same thing, it looked the same from the outside of the envelope. It was then that she finally gave way to hot tears of disappointment. Why was everything always so shit?

It was two more days before it finally got there, just time enough for her to give up and decide it was either lost in the post or he'd been having her on or something. She'd become shit-hot at pretending that everything in her garden was lovely, just fine, was all smiley with absolutely no problems at all as she did her best to lose herself in the day-today routine of her job. She couldn't bloody afford a negative report from yet another employer, two were bad enough, three would be a fucking disaster and so far the world of local authority Day Nurseries seemed to be more than happy to do without her help.

The sight of the surprisingly thick envelope with her name written in his _beautiful_ handwriting instantly turned everything in her world the right way up again, except for a very small frisson of doubt that made her initially a bit reluctant to open it, she was suddenly afraid that he might be writing to say he'd changed his mind about her, about them, and then told herself not to be such a bloody Muppet, he wouldn't do that to her, not in a letter.

When she took it out of the envelope, it turned out to be not quite what she'd expected, for a start there was such a lot of it. Several sheets of paper were closely written on both sides so that she took a deep breath of anticipated pleasure and grinned, opening the window to get some air in the room before settling herself on her bed to start reading what turned out to be a sort of diary that he'd been keeping, one that he'd obviously been adding to ever since they left the U.K. It was all about where they were and what they'd been doing day by day, every day, well almost every day anyhow, sometimes just a few words and sometimes quite a lot and it was all about the people he was with, what their names were and lots of funny little anecdotes about them and she totally loved it, even though it made her miss him even more than she had before she started reading. It was exactly as if he was sitting there talking to her as he insisted that their female medic wasn't blonde and didn't have legs up to her armpits, also that he'd got no idea what she paid for her jeans, so that Molly giggled as she read it, it made her feel part of his world.

She could visualise them all especially when he said that last thing every night before bed, and again when he got up in the morning he looked at the photos on his phone, the one's that he'd taken of her and Sam at Hengistbury and in the garden at Archer's Gate, the two people that he loved and missed most in the world. She had to stop reading and go back and read that bit again and then again. She hadn't known he'd got any photos but really wished that she'd thought to take some of him or to ask him for one before he went, she would love to be able to do the same but it was far too late now. Mind you, she didn't need a photo to remind herself of what he looked like, she could remember every tiny detail about him, but it would have been good to have something to look at when she got into bed at night.

He'd ended by asking her to write to him, saying that he'd been wrong and that not enough wasn't worse than nothing, not enough was far, far better than nothing at all, and said that he loved her and missed her and hated not knowing whether everything was okay, knowing how her job hunt was going and if there'd been any more trouble from Rebecca. He'd ended with a little postscript that was headed 'Oh before I forget' and went on to remind her that she hadn't said that she loved him so he would be very grateful if she could make sure those words were included in her letter somewhere, and then put a whole row of exclamation marks to show it was meant to be a bit of a joke, but only a bit.

-OG-

Writing back wasn't nearly as easy as she'd have thought, she wished she could e-mail instead because she could spell-check and edit what she put and her handwriting was total crap, almost scribble in comparison to his, on top of which she wasn't sure what to say. When she started putting down all the stuff about not finding a job yet and being worried about what was going to happen when Sally's twins were born, she ended up tearing it up and starting again, the last thing she wanted was to make him suicidal with a catalogue of her miseries. As she wracked her brains trying to come up with something to tell him apart from 'I love you, I love you, I miss you, I hate it that you're not here' she realised that she wasn't actually doing anything at all. She was going to work and coming home again and then stopping in feeling sorry for herself, she wasn't going out, she wasn't seeing her friends or having any fun at all and that this was what he'd been talking about. If she wasn't bloody careful she was going to be about as much fun as a dead haddock by the time he got back.

Three attempts later she gave up trying to craft some perfect letter and just let her pen run away with her, telling him everything she could think of in the way she would tell him if he was there with her, all about Nan's latest bit of bad behaviour, getting nicked for shop lifting, and how Mum had had to go down to the police station to collect her and all about the boys getting into bother with the warden bloke at the park so that poor Mum had had to go down there as well to get them and to guarantee their future conduct. She'd told them all that she'd had a basinful of them and she wasn't going to help any of them anymore, so if they got into bother they was on their own, and that included Nan.

She made light of her abortive job search and told him that so far Rebecca had kept her gob shut and told him not to worry, but then put it in the envelope without reading it over because otherwise she'd be back to square one, tearing it up and starting all over again.

-OG-

 _ **A/N: This was the penultimate chapter so I hope you enjoyed it, last Chapter on Monday, hopefully, you know barring floods, plague, pestilence, et al or the vagaries of Virgin Media, and will be subtitled Homecoming.**_


	18. Chapter 18

_**Homeward Bound**_

 _ **Home, Where the Heart is Waiting**_

A number of very deep breaths later and someone answered the phone, the sound of a voice made her jump even though she'd been gearing up for this for more than an hour and had practised what to say over and over again. She was nervous as hell, not sure now whether the woman would think she had a diabolical bleeding nerve or would be okay and prepared to help, or the most likely scenario which was that she'd think Molly was some annoying cold caller and just tell her to piss off and then hang up.

"Hullo, is that Mrs James? Ummm, you don't know me, Mrs James, my name's Molly, and I'm a friend of Charles' and I just wondered if I could ask you, ummm whether you could, well if you could tell me when he's due back? What time 'n that, cos I thought I'd like to go to meet him, if I'm allowed, but I haven't asked or told him or nothing, I thought about it being a surprise, and I'm not sure where they ummm, I mean know it's an RAF place, Brize Norton, but ….. sorry, I'm rabbiting on 'ere, aren't I? Sorry"

"Molly? Of course I know who you are, dear I've heard all about you from Charles and from my gorgeous grandson as well, you've got a _big_ fan there, you know, and I think it's a lovely idea to go and meet Charles, I'm sure he'll be delighted to see you"

"Really? Hope so, not sure how much he likes surprises"

"He'll like this one I'm sure, now have you got a pen and paper handy? You might need to write some of this down, it's not quite as easy as nipping to Heathrow to meet someone"

Ten minutes of detailed instruction and anecdotes later and Molly was no longer sure that this was a goer; it sounded bleeding complicated to her. Charles' mum kept going off at tangents, she was even more vague than Belinda, and Molly found herself saying she was looking forward to Christmas and hoping that his mum wouldn't be able to tell from her voice just how horrified she was at the thought of spending it in Bath. In the end she'd promised to go to Hamleys for some vital bit of Lego and to the Nespresso shop to get the poncey coffee that Charles apparently couldn't live without over Christmas, and then forgot all about her resolution to find, if not a decent excuse, at least a _credible_ one, not to go to Bath. That was until after she'd put the phone down.

-OG-

Three weeks, two days and seven hours later and she was sitting on a hard orange plastic chair in an echoing space that was packed to the rafters with damp looking people, it was pissing down outside and very chilly so what looked like hundreds of people were all steaming nicely as they waited. It all added to the horrible chilly, stuffy, fetid sort of humid atmosphere in a place that had loads of kids running about shrieking with excitement as their mums' yelled at them to stop it, sit down and sit still and she was crapping herself with nerves. It was a fair old hike out of London which meant that she'd been worried about being late so had got there miles too early so had a really long wait, and the nearer it got to the time they were due, the more nervous she'd got so that now she couldn't sit still, kept bodging about probably looking like she needed the loo, again. The sick churning feeling in the pit of her stomach, the excitement, anticipation, whatever it was, was mixed with this whole bucket load of fear, what if he'd changed his mind? What if, when she saw him, SHE had?

Letters were one thing and they'd been writing backwards and forwards since the summer, their letters getting closer and closer together so that it was difficult sometimes to find enough news, still didn't seem to matter. She hadn't put 'I love you' in any of them, in fact had told him he had to wait till he got home and she would show him, so that he'd sent her a text with just a smiley face, nothing else. She'd kept all his letters, read them over and over, and had kept them tied up with ribbon like Nan used to with the letters she'd got from her good-un, and had then kept the bundle hidden in the bottom of an old handbag, she didn't want Bella or Jade reading them and laughing at her or even her mum having a bit of a snoop.

-OG-

A crowd of soldiers came pouring through the doorway into the arrivals hall. They all looked as though they were getting back from some holiday somewhere, all brown and healthy, and laughing and waving and sticking their thumbs up at their families and friends who'd immediately got on their feet and gone surging towards them. The noise levels soared to sheer bedlam as she forced herself up onto legs that were shaky with adrenalin, her hands and feet were freezing and her head was hot and spinning a bit as she tried to look for him, but couldn't actually see him, he didn't seem to be there anywhere. Shit. She'd obviously got this all wrong, or his mum had, wrong day, wrong time, wrong something. Mind you, she couldn't really see anyone clearly even when she got up on tiptoes, there were far too many people in the way but she'd expected to be able to pick him out in any crowd with his dark hair and him being so tall, but they were all bloody tall with dark hair, or that's what it looked like to her.

And then, there he was, standing by the entrance chatting to some other soldier who put his head back and laughed at something he'd said, all tanned and gorgeous even if he did look a bit hungover and badly in need of a shave, in fact, he looked a bit like he was getting back from some 18-30 bash on the Costa del Sol where he hadn't been to bed for a few days, well, not his own bed anyway, but without the tacky souvenir donkey or bag of duty free of course, oh and if it weren't for him wearing his combats.

The last six months had felt like it had gone on forever so that, even though they'd written so often, she'd started to think about him as some sort of stranger, someone she didn't know very well so she didn't know his reactions, and she was now worried whether he'd be happy or pissed at her, she was so nervous that she was conjuring up horrible scenarios for herself, until the second he clapped eyes on her when his whole face lit up as though someone had flicked the switch on a 1000 watt light bulb. He turned to pat his companion on the arm before ducking and weaving round groups of people towards where she was pushing her way towards him, almost shoving the hordes of people out of her way in her anxiety to get to him, eyes glued on him making his way towards her, both of them now wearing huge matching grins.

"What on earth are you doing here?"

"Meeting you?"

"Come here then and give me a hug"

He lifted her off her feet and spun her round laughing out loud before holding her up so that her face was level with his when he began dotting little kisses all over it, still laughing aloud, only stopping to let her body slide down his until she was back on her feet, when he began to kiss her on her lips, tightening his hold as she kissed him back and he kissed her over and over again. There was a slow realisation from both of them that they now had a fascinated audience of soldiers all seemingly mesmerised by the floor show, as one or two whooped and cat-called while others did a lot of very loud 'shsshing'.

"Take no notice of them" He laughed as he half-turned in the direction of their audience who were watching them avidly and nudging each other, and said loudly "Latrine clean"

Molly looked over his arm in their general direction before turning back to him and giggling "You don't mean that, you wouldn't"

"Nope, probably not, but don't tell that lot" He bent his head and kissed her again lightly, still with the same huge grin plastered on his face "How did you get here?"

"Trains 'n boats 'n planes" She was now smirking as widely as he was "Bleeding long way innit?"

He didn't answer just lifted his eyebrows in an unspoken question before he remembered that she didn't drive.

"Oh shit, you don't drive do you, we're going to have to do something about that, and my car's back at barracks which is where I'm supposed to be heading shortly, here …" He dropped his belongings in a pile at her feet "Don't move, stay exactly where you are and look after this lot for me" He strode off a little way in the direction of his colleagues who were now pretending not to be paying them any attention at all, then turned and came back "Where are we going anyway?"

"We're going halves on a TraveLodge" She laughed "I've booked it and don't look at me like that, I thought about the caravan camp but then I thought, nah, sounds a bit shit and he's way too posh"

"I'm not" He paused, sounding a tiny bit defensive "Well, maybe I am a bit, I've had enough of shower blocks and communal shitters to last me a lifetime, well for a very, very long time anyway, and it's pissing down out there, so TraveLodge it is then, we'll get a taxi"

-OG-

She'd expected them to be chatting nineteen to the dozen on the way to the hotel, that they'd be falling over themselves to fill the blanks of what they'd been doing in the couple of weeks since their last exchange of letters, instead there was this slightly awkward silence where they kept turning and meeting each other's eyes, smiling and then looking away again quickly. They were both very aware of the back of the mini-cab driver's head and Molly for one was grateful as he kept up his constant stream of comments about the shit weather and then started asking Charles where he'd been cos it was obvious that the weather had been a lot better there, wherever it was. Charles pulled a face at her, he didn't really want to talk about the weather in Kenya or anything else about the place, but was far too polite to tell the driver to just shut the fuck up and stop talking.

It was the first time Molly had ever been in a TraveLodge and she knew it was supposed to be a sort of cheap bargain place so that she was pretty sure it wasn't the sort of hotel Charles usually stopped in, but it looked alright to her. It was clean and nicely decorated, weren't grotty or nothing, which she'd sort of half-expected, and it had a really nice bathroom, nice towels 'n that, and there was a great big king sized bed, a bed that she couldn't ignore because she could see it out of the corner of her eye whichever way she looked. She was edgy, excited, really happy to see him, to be alone with him, to be able to touch him, speak to him, whatever, but so nervous that she felt a bit sick. She'd spent weeks and months thinking about this moment, imagining it, longing for it, dreaming about it but now it was here she didn't know what to say.

"I need a shower, I 'm sure I stink and I think I might need a shave as well, I don't seem to have had a proper shower for months so I've got Kenyan grime everywhere you can have grime"

"No you don't, you're okay, well, considering you haven't had a wash for months" Molly giggled, deliberately misunderstanding what he'd said.

"You cheeky … , I didn't say I hadn't had a wash, just that the showers were bloody awful, you either got third degree burns from molten lava or a pathetic little dribble of ice cold water, and there was never enough of it"

He looked at her sitting on the edge of the bed and went over to sit next to her, not touching her but looking down at his feet, then looking sideways up at her as he ran a hand over the curls on the back of his neck, something that was oh so familiar to her.

"I thought you might have changed your mind, you know" He shrugged "About us, about any of this"

"Nah, course I haven't, wouldn't be here if I had, would I? but I thought you might have changed yours"

"Never"

He nudged her with his shoulder so that she stopped forensically examining the tiny patch of carpet that was right in front of her gaze, she was practically counting the threads and turned to look at him instead and in the space of a few seconds as he leaned forwards and kissed her gently they both forgot all about Kenyan grime and showers and him needing a shave and her feeling awkward and shy and nervous and remembered what it was they'd felt for each other before they were separated and why they wanted to be together now more than anything else in the world. There wasn't a tiny bit of his body that didn't feel familiar to her as she ran her hands over it, even if he looked a bit different. His conker brown face had white crow's feet fanning out from the corners of his eyes where he'd been squinting in the sun and he had a matching patch of deep brown that was his neck and the same on his forearms, but the rest of his body was its usual colour so that she teased him about being striped as she ran her fingers along the edge of his tan lines, making him shiver and the eyes that were looking into hers looked just the same, deep pools of chocolate brown with pupils that were huge and dark with desire.

Being in bed just after midday wasn't a novelty to Molly, she'd been in bed at that time more often than she cared to admit, but it had always been a question of _still_ in bed because she'd been out half the night or was trying to recover enough to lift her head off the pillow after a mega boozing session. It had never before been because she was cuddled up with someone who'd just brought her to a shuddering climax, something she was pretty sure had been reciprocated judging by the euphoric smile on his face. She was filled with this overwhelming feeling of affection for him, not just because she fancied him and not just because of the sex they'd just shared, amazing though that had been, but because she'd fallen in love with him all over again. She couldn't bear the thought of being separated from this man who was now holding her tightly into his side and repeatedly kissing the top of her head, the man who was creating a trail of goosebumps as he ran the backs of his fingers up and down the arm that was draped across him.

"I think you might have forgotten you've got something you promised to say to me"

"What? yeah, you're right" She giggled and pretended to sniff and wrinkling her nose at him "Maybe you do stink a bit, go and have a shower with that lovely lemoney stuff of yours"

"That wasn't what I meant and you know it, oh, and you didn't complain just now" He laughed "Anyway I've got none of that lemon stuff left so hotel soap is the best I can offer, probably smells like loo cleaner, and I expect you want me to have a shave as well?"

"Bit late innit? I've most probably already got stubble rash on top of stubble rash, and I didn't notice just now cos I were distracted, couldn't you tell? Some'ing was taking me mind off of it"

"Right" He swung his legs off the bed "Don't go anywhere, I won't be long" He kissed the tip of her nose "Do you need the bathroom before I go in there?"

"Nah, you're alright" She knew she should go and sort herself out, she was decidedly sticky and probably a bit whiffy as well, still it was the smell and the feel of him and she didn't want to wash it away just yet as she piled up what pillows there were behind her head and settled back to watch him "Don't be long" She was sorry now that she'd encouraged him to go and waste time having a shower as she watched him walk away, narrowing her eyes at his broad back and shoulders, and then wanting to run her hands over the muscles, down to where they tapered to his narrow waist and hips, and then to run her hands over his beautiful firm bum above the long, long slim legs "I gave up Harry for you, must mean that I love you"

He stopped and looked back over his shoulder to where she was still in bed grinning at him "You can show me when I get back" He paused "Or you know what? On second thoughts I don't really need a shower"

Hours later she lay next to him listening to his quiet breathing as he slept and she watched him sleeping. Apparently they'd been out on patrol after patrol in the last two days before they'd come home and, unlike most of the lads, he hadn't been able to catch up on any sleep during the journey, not to mention a fairly action-packed reunion over the last few hours, so that he was exhausted. He'd done his best to stay awake, despite the agonised intensity of his yawns, but had finally succumbed as she'd gently stroked his hair back from his forehead and now lay and thought about all those recent evenings when she'd gone out with Bella or some friends, or just lately with the girls she worked with. They'd sit in a pub or in a night club and she'd desperately try and fail miserably to have what she used to think of as a good time. She'd got no interest whatsoever in going out and getting slaughtered anymore and then maybe picking up some random bloke while she was wearing beer goggles, perhaps even having a one night stand, it just wasn't what she wanted, what she wanted was to be with the bloke sleeping next to her, that this was _right.._

He'd wanted them to go away on holiday straight after Christmas, to spend some time together and had looked really disappointed when she'd told him she couldn't, that she had a _proper_ job which she was gonna start on 2nd January. 8 till 6 or near enough, Monday to Friday, for a rate of pay that was a bleeding joke, but the job was at the Nursery where she'd been doing Maternity cover so that when they'd offered her a full time job she'd been thrilled but had kept it a secret to tell him when he got back. He'd said he was really pleased for her so she'd had to believe him, although she still wasn't sure, until he'd said about them renting somewhere to spend time together at weekends, which wasn't perfect but would definitely do for her for the moment.

-OG-

"Shittin' hell" They were standing outside his parent's house in Bath and Molly was looking up at the façade with an expression of pure horror mixed with awe "What, they live here? Your mum 'n dad? In all of this? Not just a flat? Bloody hell Charles, you never told me you was some sort of royalty"

"Didn't I? Could have sworn I did" He laughed "Come on, it's just a house and it's not mine, I'm homeless, remember?"

"Yeah right"

"DADDY" A thoroughly ecstatic Sam had obviously been watching out for the father he hadn't seen for more than six months and had opened the front door to fling himself into his father's outstretched arms "AND MOLLY"

"Hello Scamp"

"See Nana, told you Molly was Daddy's girlfriend, didn't I? Everyone kept on saying that she wasn't and that I was wrong, but I knew she was"

-OG-

 _ **A/N: I know this chapter is a bit long, but to be honest once I got going I could have kept on for another few thousand words, but I'd made the decision to end this here, so ….. ! Thank you for your ongoing support over the past year and a half, I've had a ball writing these stories, and your reviews and kind words have made all the difference when I've got a bit disheartened, once a drama queen etc, etc … As for the future, well, never say never ….**_


	19. Chapter 19

_**A/: I know, I know, blame Debbie and that photograph yesterday ….. How do you deal with an addiction when the object of your obsession is there in front of you? Sorry, don't mean to imply that a certain gentleman is an object, or that the photograph didn't hit the spot (don't ask) but you know what I mean …. Chapter 20 when I've written it, if you want me to**_ ….

 _ **Christmas – Part 1**_

Molly hung back slightly as Charles swept Sam up in his arms, then, with Sam' arms still tightly clasped round his neck and skinny little legs wrapped round his waist, he bent to kiss his mother and pull her into his side, kissing the top of her head in his familiar gesture of affection, at the same time as telling her not to be silly, that there was nothing to cry about, that he was home safe and sound and all in one piece. Molly's own eyes were prickling as his mum sniffed and surreptitiously wiped her tears away with the back of her hand before denying that she was doing any such thing, it was just the cold making her eyes water after the warmth of the kitchen. She turned to Molly and held out one arm, waving a hand to beckon her into the house as she fussed around exhorting Charles to hurry up, that they were letting all the heat out and that his dad would give her hell and say that she was heating the street if he saw the front door was still wide open.

"Where is Dad?"

"He's upstairs fiddling and faffing about with draught excluder on the windows" Margaret James looked at Sam who was still clinging round his father's neck like a little monkey "Sammie, do something for Nana darling, go up and tell Grandpop that Daddy and Molly are here" She smiled and motioned for Molly to follow her into the steamy warmth of the kitchen which smelled of coffee and mince pies, but was, unlike her own home, tidy and uncluttered even with extensive food preparation going on so that Molly wondered what the hell he'd made of Belinda's mess.

Margaret was busy bustling about pulling the kettle to the front of the AGA and fiddling around with the coffee machine before setting out cups and saucers and putting a plate of mince pies in the Aga oven to warm as Charles bounded after Sam making him squeal with excitement as Charles chased him, taking the stairs two at a time to go and find his father as Molly stood feeling awkward and unsure. She was cursing him in her head, bloody man, typical bloody selfish, bloody man, leaving her here on her own, well, with his mother and without a bleeding clue what to talk about. She could understand that he wanted to see his dad, in theory anyway, she'd never felt like that about her own father, mind you he was always around, and Charles hadn't seen his dad for months, but still ….

"Careful on those stairs you two"

Margaret James shouted at them and shook her head, saying that sometimes it was hard for her to remember that Charles wasn't a little boy anymore and that Molly would understand when she had babies of her own, then stopped and said she'd forgotten that Molly would know all about it already seeing that she worked with children. Molly didn't want to say that it was different when they was other people's because she didn't want to sound like some uncaring whatsit who didn't give a shit if other peoples' kids fell down the stairs, so scratched about for something sensible to say.

"Seems really nice here, Mrs James?"

"Margaret, dear, what is, do you mean Bath?"

"Nah, well yeah, I mean it seems really classy 'n that, but I was actually talking about your house, its lovely"

"Yes I know and I know I should be grateful that I live here, and I am" She paused and thought about it for a second "Most of the time, but this place is a nightmare at this time of the year, full of draughts that would clean corn, so we're fighting a constant battle trying to keep it warm, except in here with the AGA, which is why I spend most of my time in the ruddy kitchen, Oh and when the fire's alight in the lounge, but hauling logs in all the time is a pain, and upstairs, well, that's a totally different kettle of fish. Bill, that's Charles' dad, moans continually about the cost of heating this place" She put a pot of tea on the table and motioned for Molly to come and sit down with her "What he expects me to do about it I've got no idea, still, keeps him happy having something to make a fuss about, I suppose"

Molly giggled, Margaret, the woman that she'd been so anxious about meeting might have the same posh sort of accent as Charles, and Rebecca for that matter, she might speak as if she'd got a gob full of marbles just like them, and she might look like she'd shopped in the type of shop that Nan wouldn't even risk going through the door, let alone pilfering from, but she was nice. She was smallish, taller than Molly but tiny next to Charles, and slightly plump with hair that was going grey and was just a little bit wispy and untidy but she had his beautiful brown eyes and lovely smile, and wasn't a bit intimidating, just seemed normal.

"Dad says he'll be down in a second, and he'll have Earl Grey, not the creosote you drink" Charles dropped a kiss on Molly's head as he passed and sat in the chair next to her mouthing the word "alright?" when she turned and smiled at him "Molly?"

"Creosote please" she smirked "Sorry, I like proper tea and stronger the better, I don't really like the smell of Earl Grey, I think it smells like washing up stuff, like someone forgot to rinse the cup, sorry"

"Charles, you and Sammie both told me that Molly makes you laugh, and I can see that, but you didn't say one word about just how pretty she is ….. or how sensible"

"What, because she likes her tea the way you do? And Mum, you're embarrassing her, stop it she'll be blushing in a minute, and I'm sure that I told you that she's gorgeous, you've just forgotten"

Molly wished that they'd both shut up and stop talking about her as if she wasn't there as the blush began to build in her cheeks and she pulled a warning face at Charles who was smirking and trying to avoid catching her eye. She kicked about trying to find his leg under the table with her foot so that she could deliver a good sharp kick to his calf, or even a bit higher if she could manage it, although not wearing heels meant it wasn't nearly as sharp as she'd of liked, but he grabbed hold of her foot and held onto it, stopping her from making any sort of contact with his leg at all. He began rubbing his thumb over her ankle bone so that she wanted to giggle, as he pulled her foot up onto his thigh and held onto it meaning she had to shift herself to sit sideways while he pretended to be oblivious to the way she was wriggling about trying to get him to let go of her foot at the same time as pulling faces at him.

The sudden shrill ring of his phone made her jump and had his mother tutting and muttering about telling whoever it was to just go away, that it was Christmas Eve tomorrow and how she couldn't understand why whoever it was didn't leave him alone for five minutes, that she hadn't heard anything about World War 3 on the news, so that Molly wondered why she didn't just think it could be a friend or someone calling to wish him a Merry Christmas.

"Ring tone"

Margaret's voice and her explanation were both short and sharp and incomprehensible to Molly as Margaret replied to her unspoken question and raised eyebrows as Charles got up and left the kitchen muttering something about needing to take the call. She heard him tell whoever it was to hang on making it obvious that he didn't want to talk in front of them or most probably in front of her, as his mother muttered about how it had better not be who she thought it was, a comment which did a lot to confirm all of Molly's worst suspicions.

-OG-

He'd started off pacing up and down the hallway as he listened to the "oh so well-modulated, best finishing school graduate" exaggerated accent that his ex-wife used when she'd been drinking, and had then taken himself and his phone out into the garden. Freezing or not out there, he had no wish for Molly, who was probably already feeling uncomfortable, or his mother, or Sam to hear what was going on.

"You had a relationship with that _… girl_ while she was supposed to be staying in your house to look after our son, so how can you possibly think you're responsible enough to look after his best interests, to keep him safe, what sort of influence is that? And now, NOW when you've been away for months, when you haven't even seen him since you were parading your ….. bit of _fun_ in front of him, you've got the unmitigated nerve to take her to spend Christmas in Bath with your parents, with Sam there as well, it's a time for families, Charles, not for slutty little girls with her history of …..….."

"Just be very careful what you say next, Rebecca, do not in-fucking-volve Molly in your problems with me, she is not going to be a casualty in your war, you tried that once before, remember?" He'd interrupted her without compunction, using every bit of the self-control the army had taught him on keeping his temper even in the face of massive provocation "It didn't work then and it certainly won't work now, oh, and by the way, I will invite whoever I like to spend Christmas with me in my parents' home, it is absolutely none of your fucking business, you gave up any right to have an opinion on anything I do, a very long time ago"

"How dare you speak to me like that, I've apologised over and over again for what happened, I was wrong and I've said so, I can't and won't apologise any more than I already have, and it isn't me that's creating a war, it's you. You're the one who's still punishing me for what happened when you went off and ignored the fact that I needed you at home with me, when I begged you not to go, so when are you going to get over it so that we can be a family again?"

"Rebecca, you know that that is not going to happen, and you know the reasons why it can't ever be the way you want it to be and …. "He paused "It has nothing to do with Molly, so stop threatening, it isn't going to make me change my mind, nothing is going to do that"

"We'll see, and who's threatening who, whom now, Charles?" There was a silence while she selected the words she believed were going to get her what she wanted "I can't leave him there with you and that ….. girl, you know that, so I'll be there tomorrow morning and Sam comes home with me"

"No he doesn't. Sam is going to spend Christmas here with his grandparents and me and with Molly, and I don't care whether you turn up here, it won't change anything" He took a deep breath "And Becca, why don't you stop and think what it would do to Sam if you come here and make a scene? Just put him first for a change …. Oh and I'd go and have a large cup of black coffee if I were you"

"Becca? BECCA? How dare you …..…"

He hung up before she could carry on trying to continue the row, then turned his phone off, knowing that that would incense her further, but he had no inclination to listen to any more of it even though he couldn't help feeling slightly sorry for her sitting there drinking on her own, and drinking too much if her voice was anything to go by. Using the abbreviated form of her name had been a slip of the tongue harking back to the time when he'd loved her, and even though those days were long gone he wanted to tell her that he understood how she felt, how tough it was to be without Sam at Christmas, and he should know if anyone did, but that drinking wouldn't help. Telling her to just try and have a nice Christmas anyway would sound bloody stupid as well as patronising and insincere. Any goodwill that he felt was simple compassion for someone he used to love but who couldn't or wouldn't accept things the way they were now, and saying anything more at all to her would only provide another opportunity for her to repeat that he was the one stopping them being together, being a family, not her. He wished she would just go away and leave him alone, something that couldn't happen for at least the next ten years, not while Sam was still a child.

Sam and his grandfather were in the kitchen when he got back and Sam was giving Molly and his grandmother a very long and very detailed step by step description of the way he'd just helped seal the gaps round the bathroom windows, so that Charles ruffled his hair as he went past and earned himself a wide gap-toothed grin that made Sam look even younger than his years. A smile that tugged at his father's heartstrings and served to underline just how much of his son's life Charles was missing, had already missed.

He'd managed to paste a big smile on his face before he'd returned to the house, one that he thought would be convincing as his mother raised her eyebrows in an unspoken question then shook her head in angry disbelief when he'd nodded at her, before turning to smile at Molly.

-OG-

Sam had insisted on being the one to give Molly the guided tour of his grandparent's house, well the ground floor anyway, while Charles carted a whole load of logs through to the lounge and lit the fire, which was beautiful so that Molly stood and watched mesmerised as flames leapt up the chimney. She had never been anywhere where there was a real fire before, her experience was of electric fires with fake logs illuminated by red coloured lights in her Nan's front room. The tree in the corner of the room was enormous and was a mass of twinkling lights so that Molly wondered how the fuck they'd managed to get up to the top to decorate it, but before she could ask anyone Sam was showing her the big pile of presents underneath, pointing out the parcels with his name on them and telling her excitedly that there were still the ones from Father Christmas to come.

Charles had laughingly warned him not to be greedy as Molly settled down to teach him the delights of "Beggar my Neighbour". As a child of the computer, iPad, digital age it was something he hadn't experienced before but it was a game Molly had played every Christmas since she'd been old enough to learn how to cheat. She knew that there was something wrong with Charles, she could just tell, even when he joined in with the game. His act was good but not quite good enough and even though he kept on smiling at her when he caught her looking at him with a puzzled frown on her face, she was no longer convinced that he wanted her to be there with him. It was obvious it had something to do with that phone call and she was pretty sure that had been bloody Rebecca, Rebecca who was now fucking everything up….. .

Sam had gone to bed, they'd eaten supper and were now sitting drinking tea and coffee in the lounge, making general conversation, chit chat about nothing very much as Molly got more and more convinced that she was right. She hadn't yet been upstairs to his bedroom, hadn't seen where she was supposedly spending the next few nights, he'd taken her stuff up with his, but now the thought of going up there with him with his parents watching their every move was making her more and more self-conscious and doubtful.

There had been two days between Charles getting back and the two of them setting off for Bath, two days when he'd had to go back on duty, back to barracks, to sort stuff out and she'd got herself ready to spend Christmas with him. She'd waxed and plucked to make sure there wasn't a stray hair anywhere, had avoided the less painful option of shaving because she didn't want stubble like his but on her legs, or to wind up looking like an extra from Reservoir Dogs, and had instead turned herself into fucking Barbie, well, all except for the neat triangle that she decided to just trim a bit and leave where it was; she didn't want to look like a ten year old from the waist down. She'd moisturised and creamed and fake tanned, put up with the smell until it had been on long enough hoping that it wouldn't turn her orange, and now all that effort was looking like a bleeding waste of time and money. Especially as she'd used the rest of the money she hadn't got to buy some sexy underwear to replace her existing well-washed tatty stuff that even she'd be the first to admit needed binning. Now that looked like it was going to be a bleeding waste of money as well so that she was wondering whether she could get a refund on the stuff she hadn't worn. Fucking Rebecca….

Margaret and Bill were both dozing in their chairs when Charles got to his feet from the sofa where he and Molly had been sitting a good six inches apart silently gazing into the flames. He put another log on the fire before jerking his head to indicate that she should follow him, before holding out his hand to help her to her feet so that they walked out of the room together to make their way upstairs to bed.


	20. Chapter 20

_**A/N: Sorry it took longer than I intended for reasons beyond my control, power cuts, internet down and visiting sparrows, don't ask, but hope you enjoy part 2 of what seems to be turning into a long Christmas. Some people will immediately recognise the photograph I'm referring to, even if the little boy has changed his identity! I hope you enjoy this and please review for me as so many of you did for part one, for which I am more grateful than I can say. Chapter 21 is now a work in progress**_ _…._ _ **But first I have to go out in the garden and deadhead the roses before the monsoon starts again…**_

 **CHRISTMAS – Part 2**

It was a hell of a staircase, to Molly it looked like something out of a film, the stairs curving on and on and up and up as far as she could see when she put her head back and looked up, wide eyed at how beautiful it was. Mind you, she also thought it looked like one of those staircases that you could easily fall down if you didn't look where you were going, like in that film whatever it was called, and then there were all the framed photos up the wall. The photographs were almost all of Charles, from when he was a very little boy playing in the garden or on a beach somewhere, to a skinny schoolboy with a shy smile standing in front of the house in his too big blazer, then his graduation photo where he was chucking his hat in the air, and lots and lots of him as a soldier in all sorts of groups. Some of them were in colour and some black and white, some formal and some not, and in a few of them he was wearing that posh soldier clobber that she'd seen in films. He looked gorgeous in all of them, so that the 'out of my league' feeling that she'd had when she first knew him came flooding back with a vengeance. She'd had to make one hell of a bloody effort to try and look good for him, but he didn't have to do anything special at all, not even have a bloody shave. How fair was that?

She stopped by a recent one of him in his army gear. It had obviously been taken sometime in the last year, he was wearing uniform and standing in front of the house at Archers Gate and was laughing for the camera, looked really happy and bloody gorgeous with a giggling Sam up on his shoulders, hands twined in his dad's curls, so that Molly asked if they could please stop and look at each one, that she wanted him to tell her when and where they'd been taken, and why. But she actually meant that one specifically, she was bloody desperate to know who exactly had taken it. He shrugged and said that they could do it the next morning if she liked, but he'd looked and sounded so totally unfussed that she immediately started worrying that he'd already decided she wouldn't be around long enough to care about them. That bloody limp of his was back a bit as well so that he was holding onto the banister, something she wasn't sure she understood seeing as how he'd run up the same staircase when they'd first got here.

There was a big cluster of pictures of Sam as well, but there were none of all three of them together as a family and there must have been some at some point, but it was obvious that someone had taken them down, probably Margaret. There were no photographs at all with Rebecca in them, not even in Sam's baby pictures and no wedding photographs either which Molly was bizarrely pleased about.

-OG-

His room was enormous, almost as big as the top floor of her parents' whole place, and was lovely, the furniture was heavy and wooden, a bit old-fashioned, a bit what they call traditional she supposed, but there was a lovely soft cream carpet which she was glad to see had a faint coffee stain on one side of the bed, and thick cream curtains that were too long for the windows and were all bunched up on the floor. It was definitely a bloke's room with plain navy bedding, mind you she wouldn't have expected it be all flowery and pretty with a frilly duvet cover or anything, and someone, Margaret most probably, had been very busy with the Mr Sheen because everything was shiny and there was a strong smell of polish. Even though there weren't any ornaments or anything, not even any photos, for some reason it didn't seem nearly as austere as his room in Amesbury, but Margaret had been absolutely right about one thing, it was bloody freezing in there.

Charles went over and put his hand on the big old-fashioned radiator, then fiddled with the valves before shaking his head.

"Christ alive, I'd forgotten how bloody cold it is up here, this is as hot as this thing will go but it's still like a fridge in here" He snorted a short laugh "I've been in Africa for fuck sake, now I know what they mean by climate change" He was laughing as he spoke, a hollow laugh that didn't quite disguise the fact that something wasn't right.

"Don't think they mean that somehow, does your leg hurt?"

"No, well it aches a bit sometimes when I'm tired, why?"

"Thought you was limping that's all" She shrugged as she saw him shake his head, wanting to say 'alright, be a martyr' but took a deep breath instead, before going on "You gonna tell me what's wrong then?"

"Nothing's wrong, why would there be?"

He put his hand on her arm in what was supposed to be some sort of reassuring gesture but wasn't. In spite of the physical effect he had on her whenever his skin touched hers, the way her heart raced and her stomach went all fluttery, an effect that no-one else had ever had, in fact, no-one had even come close, she still had this horrible niggling feeling that everything was going to shit.

"That was her on the phone earlier, wasn't it? And don't lie"

Molly was willing him to say 'no of course not, why would it be? It was something else, someone else, someone from work or something'. Instead, he pulled a face and frowned, a deep furrow appearing between his eyes which told her everything she'd thought she wanted to know and didn't.

"I have never lied to you, never would"

"So, what did she want?" She took a deep breath ignoring what he'd just said "Was it about me? You know about me being here?"

"Yup, I'm sorry I should have told you straight away" He frowned as he paused "It wasn't about you, Molly, not really, you just provided her with an excuse to ring me like that"

"Who told her? Who said I was here?"

"I have no idea, didn't ask, but I've got a feeling it could well have been my mother when Rebecca dropped Sam off" He shook his head and swallowed hard, sucking his teeth then raking them over his bottom lip "You may not have noticed but Mum is not exactly her biggest fan, in fact, she'd like nothing better than to take her outside and shoot her"

"Rebecca wanted you to tell me to go didn't she?" She tried her best to say the name without a snarl, thinking that she wouldn't mind doing the same thing as Margaret actually. He nodded, not wanting to immediately break his promise about lying "Do you want me to? It'd make it a lot easier for you if I just … just get off home, wouldn't it?" She heard herself saying the words and wished she could shut the fuck up, what on earth did she think she was doing?

"It might be what she wants but it's not going to happen, of course I don't want you to go" He paused "It's not going to happen, is it?" He put his arms round her and then put his index finger under her chin and lifted it, forcing her to look at his face "Is it?"

"Nah, not if you say so"

"Of course I say so, I don't want you to go" He took a deep breath sounding almost exasperated with her "Molly, I keep telling you that I love you, so why do you find it so hard to believe?"

"It's not that I don't believe you, it's just …. I s'pose it's more, I dunno, more that I don't believe ….."

She'd heard what he'd said and wanted with all her heart to believe him, to take what he'd said at face value, but at the same time she wanted to scream at him "No, you don't keep on telling me that you love me, you've said it once or maybe twice, and only once when we weren't having sex and I find it really hard to believe in …. stuff ….. when I keep thinking that you still have feelings for your bloody ex-wife" If she hadn't been sure that he would just get all stern and dismiss it as nonsense, would tell her she was reading stuff into something that wasn't there, she would of told him that she hated that he kept on saying he didn't love Rebecca anymore, but wouldn't just tell her to fuck off. He'd already told Molly that they would have still been together, he would of still been married to her if she hadn't behaved like a trollop with yo-yo knickers when he was away but that she'd spent hours and hours at his bedside when he was injured and poorly. To Molly that all sounded like there was still feeling of some sort between them, more than just her wanting to get her own way and it sounded like he was still hurting from what she'd done and was still getting his own back.

"I have no clue what's going on in that beautiful head of yours so I don't know what I can say or do to make things better, I just don't know why you have so little faith in me …. in us, I think you're fucking awesome"

"Really?"

"Really"

He put his arms round her and tightened his hold so that she decided to just shut up and let it go, she was bloody sorry now that she'd even started it, it would have been far better to have kept her gob shut and to let him just get over it instead of going on at him trying to get him to explain and to say something that would make her feel better, give her some sort of reassurance. She'd just spent six months counting the days, counting the bloody hours till he was home and here they were talking about bloody Rebecca when all she wanted was to be with him, to think about how she was in love for the first time in her life, despite all the practise runs she'd had with no-hopers, and to shut that little voice up, the one in her head that kept on telling her to be afraid that he was still in love with his ex-wife.

-OG-

"You go in the bathroom first, get it all nice and steamy and warm it up for me" He laughed at the expression on her face "What? I keep telling you I'm not a gentleman"

"Yeah you are"

"Yup, you're probably right, just don't go anywhere while I'm in there"

"Nah, course not"

Ten minutes later and she was standing in the bathroom wearing her La Perla knickers and bra and nothing else and trying to feel sexy and gorgeous and not faintly bloody ridiculous as, despite the draught excluder it was so sodding freezing that she was shivering as she tried to time her re-appearance for when he was already in bed and waiting for her. She would have dearly loved to have bought some Agent Provocateur "you are guaranteed a shag" stuff but one look at the price tag had made her gulp and put them back. Not even her rogue brain cells could persuade her that spending that much on knickers that were going to end up being chucked on the floor not to mention the small fortune for a matching bra was a good idea. And that was always supposing that they didn't take her card and cut it up because buying any of that stuff would have taken her way, way over the credit she had left and that wasn't counting what she'd already put on there hoping it would take a day or two to get through to Visa.

"Wow, you look bloody amazing, is that new?"

"Yeah, thought I'd treat meself"

"Treat yourself ….. or me? What are you trying to do to me here, are you trying to drive me nuts?"

"Is it working? Cos I kinda thought I'd of been better off buying winceyette pyjamas like me Nan wears"

She wrinkled her nose at him and rubbed the gooseflesh on her arms, doing an exaggerated shiver then laughing as the huge smirk spread itself over his face and he folded his arms behind his head, his attention riveted on her so that, knowing, or rather hoping, what effect she was having on him she was tempted to try and do some sort of lap dancer type shimmy across to the bed, before deciding that she would look a complete prat and chickening out.

"Oh yes, it's working, and don't you dare ever wear winceyette pyjamas, not even when we're old and decrepit, you don't need them, I'll warm you up"

He held up the duvet next to him and patted the bed, attempting to leer at her before giving up on the act and putting an arm out to pull her into bed on top of him, gazing steadily at her mouth before moving slowly into a soft feather kiss which made her insides melt with desire while her blood raced round her like molten lava from a volcano. His tongue stayed gentle against hers at first until urgency took over and he hooked his thumbs into the thin sides of her ruinously expensive knickers sliding them slowly over totally hair free, silky smooth, moisturised and in certain lights orange streaked legs in a way that told her he wouldn't have cared if she'd looked like Chewbacca. He'd been hard before she even got anywhere near him, but as soon as she shuffled her legs and managed to push the scrap of satin and lace off with her feet he rolled her over and took his weight on his elbows leaning away from her slightly to look down at her pinned under him. The bra stayed in place as he mouthed at her nipples over the oyster satin and lace in a way that made her think the bloody thing had been worth every single penny, he was rigid where he was trapped against her stomach as he began to move his lips tantalisingly slowly down her body. She badly wanted to put her hands down and just grab hold of his bum, to wrap her legs round him and pull him in between her legs.

It was fast and furious and she was practically over the line before he'd even inched to where she was straining for him so that she clenched and grabbed at him with every bit of her that she could. Every muscle she'd got was tensed as the sensations built, her breath hitching in her throat until she was a mass of shuddering pleasure and he almost immediately began to mutter "Look at me, look at me" so that all her concentration was focussed on eyes that were all pupil so that they looked black with desire. She kept her eyes open and gazed steadily into his until he put his head back and called out her name, dropping it to bury his face in the hollow between her neck and shoulder, his warm breath tickling her skin as he murmured something she couldn't hear over and over against her neck.

-OG-

The first thing she heard the following morning was the clink of cups and Margaret's whispered enquiries about whether he'd slept well and whether or not she should she put a saucer over Molly's tea to keep it warm as he pulled himself up to lean his back against the headboard, moving carefully so as not to wake her. Good manners dictated that she should open her eyes and let them know she was awake and then move away from where she was wrapped round him in the same embrace as when she'd fallen asleep shortly after they'd made love and where she was pretty sure she'd spent the whole night, but was warm and sleepy and happy and didn't want to wake up and be sociable. She wanted to stay exactly where she was, with her head against his chest listening to his heart beat and one arm lying across his muscled stomach and one leg pinned over his, as he twitched and unfurled, hardening against her leg when she deliberately moved it slightly. Without opening her eyes or giving him or his mum any clue that she wasn't still asleep she stealthily moved her hand down and put it on him stroking lightly and then tightening her fingers around him, enjoying feeling him jump and the involuntarily tilt of his hips shifting towards her hand. She tightened her grip again and fought the urge to giggle as he continued to do his best to pretend he was listening to whatever his mother was telling him at the same time as disguising what was going on under the duvet.

"Are you going to wake me up like that every morning?"

He was laughing, busy kissing her neck and nibbling her ear as soon as his mother took herself out of the room and closed the door behind her, then moved back sharply when Margaret changed her mind and opened it again to say that Sam would be up in a second, he was just finishing breakfast. Whether she meant it as a warning neither of them were sure, although Molly suspected that she did, as she scuttled away towards the stairs without looking at them again, but leaving the bedroom door slightly open.

"Stop it, we'd best not, you heard your mum, Sammy will be up 'ere in a minute and anyway you was already awake" She moved her head to encourage him to keep kissing her neck giving lie to her words "Anyhow I won't be there every morning, you said I wasn't allowed, remember?"

"That was in barracks, I didn't say anything about when we've got somewhere to live, did I? And you are a bloody tease"

He moved to start kissing her mouth, hard, before easing her legs apart with his knee doing his level best to help her catch up with him, which was going to be somewhat of a tall order. First of all he had quite a head start and secondly she badly needed to pee, not to mention being very aware of the imminent arrival of one small boy who would no doubt be very curious as to what she was doing in bed with his dad.

"I know, sorry" She wrinkled her nose and giggled "I'll make it up to you later"

"No you're not sorry" She was grinning at him as he smoothed her hair away from her face "What the f … what were you trying to do to me with my mother standing there watching, I felt like a bloody teenager" He was now smirking as well starting to laugh as he moved his body away from hers "Does that mean I'm on a promise?"

"Yeah, would think so, well, if you're lucky, but right now I need to go to the loo" She decided against explaining how having a full bladder rather spoilt things for her "Have you got something I can put on, and I need to find me knickers before Sammie gets 'ere"

"They're in the bed somewhere I imagine, no idea, tell you what, though, if I find them I'll hang them on the bedpost, how's that?" He sniggered "There's a sweatshirt on the back of the door"

"You'd better not, not unless you want me to get the hump with you, that is NOT funny" She thought about what he'd said for a second "Don't you bloody dare"

"What's it worth?"

"Piss off"

"Lovely"

-OG-


	21. Chapter 21

_**A/N: Thanks you for sticking with me on this, and for your reviews, Chapter 22 as soon as possible because writing is one way of not caring whether it's every going to stop raining …..**_

 **Christmas – Part 3**

"D… A ... D… D …Y" Sam announced his impending arrival at the top of his voice when he was still half way up the stairs.

"See, told you we didn't have time" Molly was hastily pulling his sweatshirt over her head and even though it was huge on her was twisting round trying to check that it covered her bare bum, her knickers had apparently vanished into thin air so that if Sam hadn't been about to come bursting in she'd have accused Charles of keeping them as a trophy.

"Want to bet?"

"Nah I don't and stop being a sleaze"

Molly was giggling, even though she'd just realised how bloody cold it was in the bedroom, but that was nothing compared to the temperature in the bathroom which was even worse than it had been the night before so that the thought of stripping off to have a shower was a complete no-no. On the one hand she would have loved to stand under the hot water and was definitely a bit whiffy so that she was badly in need of a wash but doing that meant taking the sweatshirt off and that would involve a fair bit of courage that she hadn't quite got, and then she'd have to get out of the shower afterwards which didn't even bear thinking about. If she'd known how bleeding cold this place was, it would have made buying suitable presents a hell of a lot easier, bleeding thermal vests from Damart would have been favourite, although Sam didn't seem to feel the cold at all. He was sitting cross legged at the foot of the bed wearing just pyjamas without a dressing gown or anything on his feet and obviously wasn't even thinking of getting under the duvet as he concentrated all his efforts on doing a number on his dad, wheedling and acting hard-done by when Charles looked likely to stick to his guns and say a resounding no, and mean it.

"But Daddy, Grandpop said he'll take me, he said it would be his pleasure"

"Did he now?" Charles' scepticism showed in his voice "What you mean, Scamp, is that you badgered and nagged until poor old Grandpop gave in and said he would take you, anything for a quiet life"

"He did say he would, honestly Daddy, he did"

"I'm sure he did, okay, well how about you take Molly with you, you and Grandpop can show her the Christmas stalls and the lights and the decorations and all the rest?" He turned towards her to explain that Sam had some money that was burning a hole in his pocket so that his grandfather had given in and agreed to take him into town to spend it, ostensibly on extra presents although he hadn't been specific as to who exactly the presents were for. Charles was pretty convinced that Sam himself would be the main recipient as he winked at Molly giving a tiny nod of indication in Sam's direction.

"Why don't we all go?"

"You'll have fun, and it'll probably be better if you two are out of the way this morning while I stay here with Mum, just in case we get a visitor, we can't leave her to face that on her own" He nodded again in Sam's direction pulling a face to indicate that they should talk about it without the audience "I'll explain later"

Shit, it wouldn't have taken a genius to work out that they were back to bloody Rebecca again.

-OG-

The sun was shining from a pale blue sky as they walked up the High Street and Sam and his grandfather were having a very serious debate about the possibility of there being a white Christmas, which Molly thought was highly optimistic, given that as far as she could tell it was warmer outside than it was upstairs in Royal Crescent. There were a surprising number of people about for a Christmas Eve morning and they hadn't been anywhere near a Tesco's or a Morrison's, the only shops which would have been packed out at home, well apart from the ones where men like her dad, only the ones with more money, would be rushing about buying last minute stuff that their wives and girlfriends wouldn't be seen dead in. Last year her dad had had a flash of generosity or conscience or something and had gone shopping at a market stall for some fake knock-off designer perfume that Belinda had ended up pouring down the bog as soon as she'd opened the bottle and taken a sniff. It was closer to Toilet Duck than Chanel but she'd kept on saying that it was lovely, just a bit too strong for her but that it was the thought that counts, and Nan had kept on agreeing with her, saying "Yeah" and making it blindingly obvious by the face she was pulling and the tone of her voice what her thoughts about it were.

Molly was waiting for the promised text that would tell them when it was safe to go home, Charles had explained in great detail about Rebecca threatening to turn up and whisk Sam away, but how he was pretty sure that if she was going to make good on the threat she would come in the morning or not at all, so he'd promised to let them know as soon as the coast was clear and Molly had pretended that she didn't mind the thought of him stopping at home and waiting for her. She couldn't make a bloody scene every time he had to talk to the woman, she was Sam's mother for fuck sake, and he'd explained how he didn't want Sammie to see his mum getting upset so that he'd feel that he had to take sides or for him to see her making any sort of fuss about Molly or in fact about anything else either. Sam, of course, was oblivious to any tensions or undercurrents that were affecting the adults, even Bill kept on checking his watch, but Sam was happy just spending his money, erring on the side of quantity rather than quality. Bill was happily supporting his selection, extravagantly applauding and admiring his grandson's choices of what was mostly absolute total rubbish, junk that was pretty certain to end up in the bin before New Year. At least buying total crap meant that it was highly unlikely any of it would be duplicated in the expensively wrapped gifts hidden at the bottom of their wardrobe or in any of the parcels already waiting under the tree.

Eventually Bill decided that it was time to go home, text or no text, he was hungry, thirsty, cold and his feet ached as well as being thoroughly fed up that he apparently wasn't allowed to go back to his own home when it suited him. Molly for one was heartily relieved, not only was she desperate to know what was going on back at Royal Crescent but was fed up with speculating as to why the fuck he hadn't texted or called her, she was sick of checking her phone every few minutes but couldn't bring herself to stop doing it.

The illusion of warmth from that blue sky and gentle breeze had long since vanished so that her feet and hands were now so fucking cold that they were numb, and her face was frozen stiff meaning that her nose kept on running so that she felt a constant need to sniff which was most likely getting on Bill's nerves almost as much as it was on hers.

-OG-

"Looking good"

Bill smiled happily at her and nodded his head as he checked around to make sure that he was right and that there was no sign of an unwelcome car sitting anywhere near the house, unfortunately for Molly's peace of mind, there was no sign of Charles inside the house either.

"Where is he?"

Margaret was in the kitchen bustling about making tea and getting lunch ready for Sam and Bill with a face that Nan would describe as a bulldog stung by a wasp. Molly, who'd been starving an hour ago when they'd still been walking around the shopping arcade, found that she'd somehow completely lost her appetite. Her hands and feet were tingling as they thawed out in the welcome warmth of the kitchen, but as she warmed up her nose was running even more than it had been before so that she had to ferret around in the pockets of her parka, eventually finding a very old and well-used manky tissue that was solid so had probably been there for months, but she didn't want Margaret to think she was crying or anything, because she wasn't, not really.

"He's driven her home; they left a little while ago"

Margaret begun to bang plates and cups down so hard that she was in imminent danger of breaking something, but short of chucking the crockery around the kitchen or on the floor and stamping her foot, she couldn't have made her disapproval and displeasure any more evident.

"What? He's taken her home? All the way to fu.. to Dulwich Village? Why?"

"No, not to Dulwich, he wouldn't be that stupid, although right now I'm not so sure" She went to the kitchen door and yelled for Sam and Bill to stop whatever it was they were doing and come and get their lunch, and then tried hard to show some interest and admiration for the tat that Sam was dying to show her "She's staying at her parents' place at Chew Magna"

"Where the f…., I mean where's that?"

"It's not that far from here, I don't know exactly, twelve miles maybe, or a bit further, her parents own half of ruddy Somerset or think they do, well, to be fair they probably do, and it's not their fault ….." She corrected what she was saying "Not all their fault" She paused again "But I can't help it if I can't stand her" Margaret stopped banging the crockery down on the table and turned round to look at Molly "I just wish she could get it into her head that she does not _**own**_ my son"

Margaret almost hissed the last few words making her feelings very plain as she tried her best to keep her voice down, to make sure that Sam couldn't hear what she was saying about his mother as he sat at the table eating his lunch and demonstrating some plastic puzzle he'd bought, a puzzle which neither he nor his grandfather could fathom.

"But why? Why has he taken her home?"

"Said she'd been drinking, that she'd been drinking yesterday when she called him which worried him, although why it should worry him I don't know, I mean" She shook her head "It wasn't as if Sam was there with her or anything and she's a big girl now, but he said he could smell it on her today and that he was worried about her driving in that state … "

"Well that's good innit? I mean, that's what he does innit? He looks out for people, especially people that he ….. people what are important to him"

She was biting her lip wondering how soon she could escape from this bloody bad dream and knowing that she couldn't get away this side of Christmas even though her worst fucking nightmare had just come true. Her boyfriend, the bloke that she was so in love with, had gone off somewhere to look out his ex-wife and it seemed like he was still with her, after he'd said over and over that he didn't love her anymore, right, well obviously, and he'd forgotten all about his promise to call or text her, let alone tell her what he was doing.

"Oh no, Molly, no, no, no, he doesn't care for her the way you're thinking, no, oh no, no, no, I didn't mean to suggest that there was ….. no, that was all over a very long time ago when that girl set out to destroy him, when she did her absolute best to destroy this family and you want to know something, Molly? I'll never, ever forgive her for that, but no, he worries about her the way he does, not because he's still in love with her or anything so don't start thinking that for goodness sake, but she's Sam's mother and he adores that little boy and because of that he doesn't want anything to happen to her"

"I know he adores him, but I don't understand why he lets her, I dunno, try and push him around the way he does, I mean, how do you know that …. ? It all feels sorta suss to me"

"Molly I am very, very sure, although I wish I knew what's keeping him, he should have been back by now, I'm sure he was expecting to be back before the three of you got back" She checked the clock on the wall, obviously doing time calculations "He can't be much longer, he was going to get a taxi from there or call me or Bill if he couldn't, because of course it would be far too much to expect her father to give him a lift home" She shook her head, obviously not only annoyed with Rebecca but furious with her entire family, and then caught sight of the expression on Molly's face "Now don't start worrying, he'll be fine"

"I know"

But she didn't, and she couldn't, not only was she upset and angry, well jealous as fuck really that he was being all kind and caring and had gone rushing off to look after her and that none of them had heard a bloody word from him since, but if his mother was right and he wasn't still holding Rebecca's bloody hand or her head if she was puking, then where the fuck was he? She wanted badly to call him to just check that he was okay and not lying bleeding in some ditch somewhere but was afraid that either she'd come across as desperate or he wouldn't answer so that her panic would go into overdrive. She could understand now why Belinda used to ring and leave messages on her phone when she went missing for some reason and hadn't called home, usually because she was slaughtered, but her mum used to say that if she wasn't already dead, she would be when she got hold of her.

It felt like forever but was no more than another hour when the sound of his key in the lock had her up and out of the chair before she could even think about being cool and distant and mature and controlled and asking him casually where he'd been and whether everything was okay as though it was no big deal which was what she'd meant to do, what she'd been rehearsing, well, that's if he wasn't dead. It was a big deal, it was a bloody big deal, but right now all she wanted was to just hug him with sheer relief that he was home in one piece as he'd said to his mother when they'd arrived the day before.

"Everything alright?"

She was quite pleased with the casual way she managed to ask the question as she put one hand on his arm "Your Mum's been a bit worried, well, we both have" As statements went that probably qualified as the bleeding understatement of the year.

"I'm sorry, you can hate me if it helps"

"Why would I hate you?" Oh shit what had he done? "I don't know what you've done, do I?" She paused "What have you done?"

"Well, nothing apart from inviting you here for a magical Christmas and then leaving you to spend the whole day with my dad and son while I spend all day with my bloody ex-wife" He frowned "Remind me never to do a good turn for anyone ever again, I couldn't get a taxi for love or money I think they've all fucked off home early for Christmas and I didn't want to stay there but Henry kept on saying that he would give me a lift so it would have been unforgivably rude to say 'forget it I'll get the bus'. I'd forgotten that my phone's out of charge, dead as a bloody doornail, so I couldn't call you, any of you" He put his arms round her "And to top it all, all the way home in the car he kept trying to persuade me to make up a four with them for some Ball at New Year, apparently Rebecca can't find an acceptable partner"

"Is Henry her dad?" He nodded "Hasn't she got any friends she can ask? I mean she might well be a trollop, but she can't have slept with all of them, can she?" For a minute she thought that she'd misjudged it and gone too far as he stared at her, face totally expressionless until he put his head back and roared with laughter "What did you say to him anyhow?"

"I told him there was no fucking way" He looked down at her arms round him "I thought you'd be upset and angry with me, I don't seem to have seen you at all today"

"Did you? Well I am really" She smirked "Is she okay?"

"Stupid cow, what the fuck she thought she was doing drinking and then driving over here to try and make a scene I have no idea, cannot imagine, although she didn't seem drunk, but who knows?" He shrugged as he put his arm round her shoulders urging her to move down the hallway towards the kitchen "I just hope it was because it's Christmas and that it's not a regular thing with her, apart from anything else I know she's his mother but don't want Sam in the car with her if she can't be trusted" He wiped his hand over the back of his neck and tugged at his curls "Hey, I'm fucking starving do you reckon there's any food in the fridge? I mean it's obviously packed solid but am I allowed to eat any of it?"

-OG-


	22. Chapter 22

_**A/N: Hope everyone has a lovely weekend, you never know it might actually stop raining. It's getting beyond a joke now and I can't spend the whole weekend writing, I promised.**_

 **Christmas – Part 4**

The fridge was packed with all sorts of goodies so that she looked up at him over her shoulder and raised her eyebrows in a sort of question, needing him to give her some sort of a clue what he wanted to eat. He was standing so close behind her that she could _feel_ him breathing as he leaned forward and wound his arms round her waist, resting his chin on her shoulder so that there was this huge temptation to forget all about making bloody sandwiches and to just lean back and feel his arms tighten around her. She badly needed a hug, on the whole it had been a thoroughly shitty day.

On the plus side, she still couldn't quite believe that in spite of everything that had gone on she'd managed to keep her gob shut meaning, well hoping, that she'd come across as all reasonable and supportive and grown up 'n that, so much so that she almost wished the people who knew her well, like her family, well, like everyone really, could have been there, seen her and heard her, they would have been totally bloody gobsmacked. Okay, so everything he'd said had made perfect sense and was obviously true, well she wanted to think …. to believe _… that_ it was all true, and she did, really, but that didn't mean that she didn't want to yell and scream and batter him and tell him not to bloody well ever do anything like that to her ever again. But she hadn't, and she wasn't going to, and for that she was dead proud of herself, even if she was now stood there looking at all that food in the fridge knowing that the thought of actually eating any of it made her feel slightly sick.

Eight months ago when her life had been busy going down the bog and she'd got the first bloody clue that the bloke she and Sandy had lusted after all those years before, the customer that she'd had an almighty crush on, the one who'd rescued her from bloody Piotr, was about to reappear in her life she'd been bleeding horrified. It had looked like just another bit of the sort of shitty luck she'd been having and she'd definitely got over her crush by then, that was until she'd seen him again. Even then, it had taken a little while before she'd admit to herself that she fancied him, well that was putting it mildly, because it had been nothing like the first time round, this time she'd got an unbelievably overwhelming crush on him. Now, all this time later, even when she hadn't seen him for months in between, it didn't look like it was going to go away or that she was going to get over it, things might have changed a bit since that day in the garden at Archer's Gate, well some things had, but in a whole lot of ways they were exactly the same.

One thing that was different was that she was going to have to face something she'd avoided even thinking about before now. This was going to be on-going, this need he seemed to have to watch out for his bloody ex-wife wasn't going to come to an end any time soon, it looked like it couldn't, she was Sam's mum and for some reason their history made him feel responsible for her in some way. It was no bloody good making a bleeding fuss, screaming and yelling and crying 'n that, it wasn't going to stop the two of them being sort of joined at the hip, so it was now more a question of whether she could get used to it, because if she wanted him, like it or not, she was gonna have to learn to live with it. She was going to have to do a sort of Princess Di ….. if she could and that was a bit debatable….. .

-OG-

Margaret looked over at his plate with deep suspicion as the two of them slumped down on the sofa in front of the roaring log fire, she still had her bulldog face on as she put her glasses on the end of her nose and glared at him over the top of them. Sam was teaching his grandfather how to play his version of the game that Molly had taught him the day before, in the last few hours he'd found practise had made perfect so that he'd become an extremely accomplished cheat. Molly, who because of her history was a connoisseur of the art of cheating at card games especially at distraction techniques while dealing from the bottom of the pack, giggled and whispered "Oi, I saw that" as she ruffled his hair, so that he looked up and gave her one of his most endearing gap-toothed grins.

"What have you got there?"

"A sandwich?"

"Don't be clever Charles James, it doesn't suit you"

It was easy to tell from her tone of voice as well as her words that Margaret was actually a very long way off from forgiving him. Molly giggled as he muttered "Lovely, thanks for that" under his breath.

"Molly you didn't have any lunch, so why haven't you got a sandwich? Charles, why hasn't Molly got something to eat as well?"

Margaret started bustling to her feet as Molly shook her head saying that she wasn't hungry and that Margaret needed to stop worrying about her, she was fine, but Margaret was still muttering to herself as she went out to the kitchen and started to bang things around so that he got to his feet and followed her, obviously off to pour oil on troubled waters and to make his peace with his mother. Sam ran out after them, keen to find the rubbish he'd bought that morning to show off his treasures to his father leaving Molly with Bill, who pulled a rueful face.

"God help him if he's eaten something vital" Bill's dry tone of voice made Molly start to giggle.

"Shi …. Sugar, it'll be my fault if he has, I were the one who made the sandwich"

"In that case I'd keep my head down if I was you"

"I heard that Bill James"

"Sorry dear" He smiled then grimaced as he whispered "I always forget that she's got hearing like a bat as well as a memory like an elephant"

They were giggling like a pair of schoolgirls when Charles came back to sit next to her on the sofa looking from one to the other with a quizzical expression on his face so that Molly patted him on his arm and told him not to worry about it, suddenly she was extremely happy again.

-OG-

The usual battle to get Sam to bed didn't materialise of course, although he no longer quite believed in Santa and Rudolph and the rest, he wasn't yet ready to take any chances and was all for having an early night, although Charles and Margaret both pointed out that 5 o'clock was a bit too early, neither of them having the faintest wish to be up in the small hours. Bill had his tongue firmly tucked in his cheek as he kept encouraging Sam, saying that as he'd be up at stupid o'clock anyway so he should definitely make sure he got some sleep in before then. Margaret who was very obviously tired and suffering a severe lack of a sense of humour was rapidly losing her temper with her husband who was blithely taking no notice whatsoever of her increasingly tetchy comments.

Molly was suddenly attacked by a huge wave of homesickness for her brothers and sisters, especially the little ones who still believed, together with eye prickling admiration for her mum who would, she knew, have done everything in her power and against all the bloody odds that were stacked against her to make sure that they wouldn't be disappointed in the morning. She spent months every year going without, scrimping and saving and doing her best to keep the money out of Dave's clutches so that the kids would have a good Christmas, and Molly was appalled to realise as she sat there in this house where there was obviously no shortage of money and only one very lucky little kid, that no-one ever said thank you to Belinda. They said thank you for the gifts, of course they did, well except for the little ones who believed that some fat old geezer with a white beard and wearing a red suit provided them, but none of them ever said anything to show how much they appreciated all the rest. She certainly hadn't ever said, had just taken it for granted until today and now she wished with all her heart that her mum was there so that she could give her a big hug and tell her what a great mum she was.

"You okay?"

"Yeah, course, I think I'm just gonna go and ring me mum, make sure she's okay, well that everything's okay"

Molly could feel the tears as they gathered at the backs of her eyes and nose as she waited for Belinda to pick up, she knew that her mum would be yelling for someone, anyone, to answer the bloody phone and everyone would be waiting for someone else to do it, so that in the end mum would grab it before whoever it was gave up and rang off. Belinda eventually answered, sounding harassed and ready to tell whoever it was to piss off, but her voice asking Molly what was wrong and whether she was crying, made her homesickness far worse which meant that she'd had to lie and tell Belinda that she had a bit of a cold. They'd had a short conversation against a backdrop of what sounded like a bloody riot as over-excited kids ran up and down the stairs yelling at each other as they played some game, and her mum kept telling her to hang on while she yelled at them to stop it and to just shut up for a second while she talked to Molls, but at least they weren't arguing for once. As soon as Belinda established that there was no sinister reason for the unexpected phone call from her eldest, she reminded Molly that they were due to speak the following day when her Nan and Dad would be there as well, before loud screams led to her saying that she had to go before someone got themselves hurt, they was all getting a bit too excited.

She was still sitting on the bottom of the stairs and trying to stem the tears when he came looking for her at which point she took one look at him and burst into a fresh flood.

"Shit, what's wrong?" He sat next to her on the bottom step and put his arm round her shoulder pulling her into his hug and kissing the top of her head "What's happened? Is everything okay at home?"

"Yeah, course, sorry, it's just me being a Muppet, take no notice, I'll be okay in a minute" She wiped her tears away with her hand then sniffed, she didn't want to look disgusting and wipe her nose with the back of her hand or her sleeve, especially when he rested his forehead against hers making it hard for her to control a fresh flood of waterworks "It was just, you know, talking to Mum 'n that, just miss 'em a bit, I s'pose, that's all"

"I know" He kept his forehead resting against hers as he went on "But I've told you before haven't I?" He lifted his head from her forehead and put a finger under her chin lifting her face up so that she had to look up at him "Stop saying that you're sorry, I'm the one that should be saying sorry, and I am"

"What for? And I know it's a bit of an habit, I might gonna have to make a New Year's resolution or some'ing, sorry"

"I'm sorry because believe me this wasn't what I had in mind when I said we'd have a magic Christmas, so far all I've managed to do is fuck it up" He pulled his beseeching 'please don't get the hump with me' face as Molly struggled to smile at him despite bleary eyes and a bunged up nose "Listen, I know all about being homesick at Christmas and about how you only realise how bad it is when you speak to someone in your family, so we might going to have to go and see them after Sam's gone back on Boxing Day"

"Do you mean that?" She did a better job of smiling as he nodded his head and raised his eyebrows "What, you as well?" He nodded "And it's nothing like when you was away fighting in some war or something … somewhere, I'm just being a bit sort of stupid 'n I don't know why, cos if I was there at home I'd be wishing I was somewhere else as soon as me Dad has his first drink, like at breakfast, and then him and me Nan will start one of their bloody barneys or when the kids start kicking off and then Mum will get all shitty"

"All that nonsense with Rebecca isn't what you bargained for though, is it? It's certainly not what I had planned"

"Let's just stop talking about her now shall we? Else I'll start to think you've got 'mentionitis'"

"I have no idea what that is but it sounds exceedingly painful"

"It's when you fancy someone so that you can't stop mentioning their name, you bring it up all the bloody time, just so you can say it, every time you open your gob"

"Nope" He paused pretending to think about what she'd just said, then pulled a horrified face "I definitely haven't got that" He used his thumbs to wipe away the last of the tears that had leaked onto her cheekbones, then kissed her lightly before going on "Now, you already know what a culinary genius I am so I've volunteered that we'll get supper ready while Mum sees to getting Sam ready to go to bed, even if it is still far too bloody early"

"Oh shit, what we having? Marmite on toast?"

"That's cruel" He smirked "Right then, in that case we'll have whatever you feel like cooking"

"You cheeky bugger" She pretended to think for a second or two "Peanut butter on toast it is then"

-OG-

"Happy Christmas Molly, Molly, MOLLY here, look, are you going to open your present, open it now"

Sam had already tried his father who had promptly pulled the duvet over his head and buried his face in it as he did his very best to ignore the wake-up call he was getting so that Sam had raced round to the other side of the bed.

"Happy Christmas Sam, what's the time?" Despite the fact that she had her eyes glued firmly shut Molly could tell that someone, obviously Sammie, had put her bedside touch light on so that there was some dim glow in the room and she could hear Sam's heavy breathing so that she prised one eye open enough to be able to see his face looming at her from about six inches away as she tried as hard as she could to dredge up her 'nanny knows best' voice "Sammie, it's far too early, go back to your bed" a tone of voice and a request that he took no notice of whatsoever.

"Santa's been, Daddy" He waited about three seconds for a response from his father before repeating himself at the top of his voice "I said, HE'S BEEN, DADDY"

"Oh good" Charles sounded very sarcastic and less than thrilled as well as very muffled as he buried his head further between the pillow and the duvet "There's no need to shout Scamp, I heard you, now be a good boy and do as Molly says, go back to bed for a bit and then you can come back and open your stocking in a ….. little while" He hastily amended what he was saying "When I say that you can"

"You'll be lucky" Molly giggled "What time is it anyhow?"

"Ten to four for fu … goodness sake"

"You're awake now Daddy, aren't you? So can I? Can I open my stocking now?" Sam hauled himself up on the bed stocking in hand and started to wriggle down in between them putting his icy cold feet on Charles in the process, and making Molly very glad that she'd decided it was so bloody cold in the room the night before that she was going to sleep in her West Ham top rather than stark naked.

"Sammy, where the hell are your slippers?"

"I don't know Daddy; I think they're a bit lost"

"You know what we said last night? Well, forget it I've just changed me mind" Molly giggled as she gave in to the inevitable and waved her hand around trying to connect with the base of the bedside lamp without opening her eyes any more than she already had and then bashed at it until it was full on, squinting at the sudden blaze of light, and then began to laugh as Charles pulled the pillow over his head, groaning loudly as he did it.

-OG-

They'd gone to bed very early, using Sam's predicted early start as an excuse and ignoring the knowing glances that Bill and Margaret had exchanged. Molly had stopped by the photograph on the wall, the one that had been taken at Amesbury with Sammie sitting on his shoulders and had looked up at him as he stopped one step further up looking back to see what was keeping her.

"You see this one?"

"Yup, that was last year in Amesbury"

"Yeah, I know" She took a deep breath and bit her lip "Who took it?"

"Mum, I think, or it might have been Dad, I can't remember" He shook his head and smirked as he looked at her face "Who did you think took it?"

"I dunno, no-one, it don't matter, I just wondered that's all"

-OG-


	23. Chapter 23

_**A/N: Sorry this took a bit longer than I anticipated but I was trying to make sure that the scene was set for the New Year. I was also aware as I was writing it that gorgeous as he might be, they haven't been together long enough for Molly to throw all her hard won caution to the wind and run the risk getting her fingers burnt, she's only just got her life back together …..**_

 **Christmas – Part 5**

"Who do you think took it?"

"I dunno do I? Just wondering that's all"

"You thought it was her didn't you?" He snorted a short laugh down his nose "That person we're not allowed to mention"

"You are so funny ….. and I never said anything like that" He bit his bottom lip controlling his amusement, then looked at her sharply and raised his eyebrows, disbelief was written all over his face "Alright, well maybe I did think it, a bit, but I never said"

"You didn't have to"

He'd closed the bedroom door and leaned his shoulders back against it shaking his head slightly as she went and sat on the edge of the bed, it was his turn to want to shout at her that she didn't seem to be listening. He wanted to ask her what he'd have to do to convince her when he told her that his only relationship with Rebecca was that she was his ex-wife, with the emphasis on the ex, and that she was Sam's mother not to mention a complete pain in his arse. It didn't matter how much Molly sat there and denied it he could see as plain as the nose on his face just how much this business with Rebecca was getting in the way, it was getting in between him and the girl with the long dark hair and beautiful eyes who was sitting on his bed and refusing to look in his direction.

Life had been so much less complicated when she'd first arrived in Amesbury and he'd been so bloody irritated and annoyed with her for just being there, this girl that he'd vaguely remembered meeting in some café years before, the girl who'd gone on to make him laugh weaving her way into his life …. into his head and his heart when he wasn't looking, so that he'd spent a lot of time in the past few months thinking about her, especially at night when he'd been alone, lying in his pit, dreaming about her, wanting to be with her … .

"Why?" He was still standing by the door looking at her but she still wasn't looking at him, she'd put her hands down flat on the bed one each side of her legs and was leaning forward rocking backwards and forwards slightly, apparently fascinated by the stain on the carpet where he'd sent a mug of coffee flying one morning when he'd woken with a hideous hangover. Her hair was falling like curtains on both sides of her face so that he couldn't see what she was thinking or feeling, her expression was hidden from him "Come on tell me, I thought we'd done all this, I thought I'd told you about all of it" He paused, waiting for a response that didn't come "Why would you even think that it was her?"

"I said, I dunno" He moved across the room to sit by her on the bed when she burst out, still without looking directly at him "Yeah, alright, actually I do. I know it's been lovely last couple of days, you, me, Sammie, it's been well nice, most of the time anyway, but I'm sorry, I just don't get it, Charles. I've really tried, but I don't get why you're so bleeding bothered about her having a couple of drinks" He looked down at his feet without commenting on what she'd said "And it's not like you never have the odd drink, cos you do, I've seen you, and having a drink is hardly the end of the bleeding world is it? I've been known to have the occasional tequila ….. or three ….. or sometimes even a few more if I'm being honest"

"Tequila? I thought it was Vodka"

"Yeah, well that as well" She finally looked straight at him "Sometimes I might even have had a tiny bit more than's good for me" She giggled "Not often, I'll give you that, but it has been known"

"Surely not" He smiled "But you don't drink and drive, do you?"

"Nah, apart from anything else I can't drive, can I?" She paused "But you don't know that she does neither, do you? You said you could smell booze but that she didn't seem drunk, that was what you said wasn't it? So what did she say when you asked her? I mean, you did ask her, didn't you?" He still didn't answer "Nah, thought not, so you just got all in charge 'n that, decided you was right and drove her home, well to her parents' gaffe, which was fine, it was the right thing to do if she'd been drinking, but … she never said she had did she? She just let you …. well, course she did" Molly gave a little hollow laugh "I know you don't have to, we haven't been together long enough for it to be any of my bloody business, but if you want me to believe you, you might gonna have to tell me what it's all about"

"She used to drink before when we were still together, before we separated" He bit at his bottom lip and then put his hand on the back of his neck, tugging at his hair "A lot … so that I was always worried stiff when I was away and it was my fault, Molly, she couldn't cope with being on her own, so I suppose I felt guilty, I still do in a lot of ways" He shrugged his shoulders "I couldn't give her the settled life she wanted, I let her down"

"What, so it was your fault she decided to have a drink instead of finding some'ing to do when you was away? Oh, yeah, that's right, you said, she did find some'ing to do, didn't she? She decided to shag every bloke that was willing, was she pissed when she did it? Don't answer that cos you don't know, you was way fighting some bleeding war" She could see from the expression on his face that she was going far too far and was hurting him, but couldn't seem to shut up "I'll bet they couldn't believe their bleeding luck" She couldn't help it, she was suddenly blazing angry and frustrated and couldn't or didn't want to do the doe eyes and the wobbling bottom lip, what she wanted was to hit something or preferably someone, very hard.

"You know me dad's the same don't you?" He turned and looked at her without speaking "Far as he's concerned it's always someone else's fault, Mum nagging, or us kids driving him nuts, or losing the footie, or winning or Nan getting on his tits, it can be some'ing else, anything, but you wanna know some'ing Charles? It's not, it's none of them things, it's him, he drinks too much cos that's what he wants to do and she's most likely just the same. No-one's holding a gun to her head and she's not an alkie is she?" He shook his head "So, if she does sometimes drink a bit too much it's cos she wants to, and I'm sorry, I don't wanna upset you or nothing, but it's just the way it is …. and I don't know why I'm sayin' all this to you, cos it's none of my bleeding business and you already know it all anyhow don't you?"

"Yup" There was a long pause "And I know that you're right and I know that she's still trying to make me feel" He paused "Responsible in some way for the fact that she's not happy, but she's Sam's mother, and I worry about what all this … shit …. is doing to him"

"I'm sorry, course you're right, it's not ideal, course it's not, but I think you'll find that he'll be okay, kids are more, can't think of the right word, but kids cope much better than we think they can, 'n he's at school all week inne? 'n then he's got you as well" She did her best to smile "And it's not like she's falling down drunk all the time or, I dunno, necking meths or some'ing is it? … Look at me, I survived"

"I don't want him to just _survive,_ Molly"

"What you sayin' here, you think my _perfect_ childhood screwed me up in some way?" Molly giggled before smiling at him and shaking her head "You might be right actually" but as she said it she wondered how the hell this had happened again. For the second night in a row she'd ended up sitting on the side of a bed with him in a bloody freezing cold bedroom talking about fucking Rebecca.

"No, of course I'm not, but I do just want him to be happy, for things to be the way they should be for him"

"Course you do, and they are, alright maybe things aren't what you might call" She paused and pulled a face, shrugging as she looked for the right word "Perfect, but he's got you and you're a great dad, and he's got your mum and dad, and I don't know what hers are like, but most probably they're okay as well, so he'll be fine"

Suddenly she was very conscious of how close they were sitting to each other, his thigh was almost touching hers so that if she moved even a tiny fraction of an inch towards him she'd be touching him, they were so close that she could smell the particular mixture of fabric softener and lemon shower stuff that was him, he must of been shopping because he'd said he'd run out of it, but she could definitely smell it now. She wanted to lean over and sniff at him like some drugs sniffer dog, but was a bit worried all of a sudden that the day from hell might well have resulted in her being a little bit sweaty in the armpits. It felt like a very long time since she'd had a shower and used any deodorant and she couldn't possibly sniff at one of them to make sure, even if she could find a way to do it surreptitiously it still wouldn't be the sexiest move she'd ever made.

Despite her doubts about whether or not she was maybe a bit whiffy and the feeling that she'd got that she needed to take a step back and use some common sense where he was concerned, all that went out the window as soon as he put his arm round her shoulders. She turned her head to find herself staring into a pair of soft brown eyes that were gazing at her, so that she didn't actually stop to think about it before she leaned forward and kissed him, a soft and deliberate kiss, because she couldn't think about anything except the way her own heartbeat was thundering in her ears. He tensed, almost as if he wasn't sure, before he kissed her back, his tongue slowly exploring her mouth, then, as the kisses became passionate and unrestrained they were delving into each other's mouths before he moved to kiss her neck and down to her collar bones as the two of them fell back across the bed. His lips were on her breasts before he pulled her top over her head and threw it somewhere on the floor, kissing a trail back to her mouth before kissing her passionately again as their bodies melted into each other, his strong hands fingering her hair with conviction.

She had no idea how long they'd been lying across the bed exploring one another when he moved to kiss the skin behind her ear and then lifted one of her hands, bringing it up to his lips and kissing each of her knuckles individually before running his lips down her palm and across the underside of her wrist, murmuring something about adoring her as she twined her fingers with his, she couldn't be entirely sure what he'd said exactly because her heartbeat was now deafening her so that she couldn't hear anything else.

-OG-

"Where are you going?"

"Gonna find my West Ham top, its bloody taters in here"

"You don't need it, come back to bed I'll warm you up"

"You just did that, but I think I might gonna need to put some'ing on, Charles, Sammie will be in here in the morning and I can't still be naked can I? I don't think that'd be, you know, okay"

"Yup, you're right, as usual" He smirked at her, all traces of the tensions of the day and the serious shit they'd been discussing had vanished from his face, so that the lines of worry had gone and he looked happy and relaxed "How did you get to be so bloody wise?"

"Just lucky I guess, I think maybe I was born like it" She smirked back at him.

By the time she'd been in the bathroom and got back into bed he'd picked up all the stuff from the floor putting the pillows back on the bed and folding her clothes neatly onto the chair and had then sorted out the rest of the bedding so that it was smooth and neat. She was incredibly tempted for a moment to tease him about being such a neat freak and to ask him whether he'd got his army ruler out to make the bed, but didn't, on the whole she had the feeling that she'd said enough for one evening and anyway she had to admit that it was actually quite nice to get into a bed that wasn't all rumpled and crumpled.

"I've been thinking"

"When I said that to you, you said it sounded bloody dangerous" She giggled as he tightened his hold on her shoulders and pulled her even closer into his side, planting a kiss on the top of her head.

"Do you want to hear or not?" He didn't wait for her to answer just carried on as she nodded slightly "I was just thinking that it might be time that I looked at resigning my commission"

"What? Leave the army?" Molly sat bolt upright to look at him before laying back and snuggling up to him "Why the fuck would you want to do that? And what would you do if you're not in the army, I thought you said it was your life, all you ever wanted to do, that is what you said innit?"

"Yes, you're right that is what I said, but things change, don't they? And things have changed, I want us to be a family"

"What? Why does that mean you've gotta give up your job, I mean, what would you do instead?" She could hear the panic in her own voice, secretly appalled that he thought she would need him to give up what he did, what he'd said that he loved, her immediate reaction was that he thought that she was just like Rebecca "Much as I'd love to, you know that I can't keep you, don't you? Not on the pittance I get paid" She giggled "I don't even earn enough to keep you in that poncey coffee of yours"

"Yes you told me, I don't expect to be your house husband" He laughed "Could be your sex slave I suppose"

"Right, don't hold your breath though, will you?"

"Nope, but I haven't even thought about what I'd do yet" He snorted a laugh "I don't want to keep on going away, Molly, I want us to be together, to have your face on the pillow next to me every night, but then you already know that don't you? I want you and me and Sam, when he's allowed, and maybe some new ones … to be a family" He carefully didn't tell her that he also thought it would be the answer to a lot of his other worries, it would mean that he would always be just a phone call away if Sam needed him.

"What? You want to have more kids? With me?"

"Yes…" He paused "What's wrong with that? Don't you want to have kids or is it kids with me you're not sure about?"

"Well nah, I mean yeah, I want kids, but ….I dunno, it's all a bit bloody previous, innit?"

"Of course it is, sorry I wasn't talking about right now, I'm not trying to railroad you into something here, I know that it's far too soon to even think about anything like that"

The rogue brain cells that so often told her to do stupid things like telling her that just one more drink wouldn't hurt when she was already trollied or that it was a bright idea to spend a shit load of money she hadn't got on a pair of killer heels were now telling her to be thrilled at what he'd just said. A feeling that lasted for all of about five seconds before common sense kicked in and she knew that she'd keep on popping the magic pills every night.

Just because he was posh and he'd said that he loved her and just because she really liked him, loved him even, and just because she bloody well hated Rebecca and it would be like spittin' in her eye, there were no actual guarantees that she wouldn't end up with her life totally fucked. Not only would it be completely the wrong thing to do right now, just when everything was starting to get itself sorted, her job and all that shit with Cindi and Eddie and the tabloids behind her, in fact it would be utterly fucking stupid, cos if it all went to shit, and it very well could do, she couldn't go back home with her tail between her legs, kiddie in tow. There was no room in the flat for starters let alone that it didn't bear thinking about how her dad would kick off at her so that she could still end up living in the nightmare that she'd seen as the future when she'd first left school. There was no way on earth that she was going to risk ending up as a single mum in some shitty flat somewhere on some sink estate with no money and not much else.

"I think you should wait a bit before you decide to do some'ing like that, I don't mean having kids" She was lying, that was exactly what she meant "I mean, about leaving the army, you never know, you might change your mind"

"I love how much faith you have in me, Molly Dawes, it's heart-warming"

"Sorry, didn't mean it like that, I just thought …. I don't want you to do some'ing you might regret after"

"I seem to remember saying something like that to you once"

"Did you? Don't remember"

OG-


	24. Chapter 24

_**A/N: Just done my democratic duty, polling station was jam-packed so that we had to queue, never seen so many people voting … the thunder and rain doesn't seem to have put anyone off.**_

 _ **Chapter25 after the weekend will be the last so hope you enjoy this.**_

 **Christmas Day … And Afterwards**

Sam gave her a calendar that he'd made himself. A whole page for each month with a drawing of things that they'd done together the previous summer, of her looking like some sort of midget with hair like a haystack, or a toddler holding hands with his dad, who he'd depicted as a giant, with legs almost as long as the stones at Stonehenge. He'd drawn the three of them at Hengistbury Head with the sea in the background as well as at Stonehenge which he'd covered with hundreds of dots to show that it had been raining, as well as the barbecue in the garden with flames like a bonfire shooting off the top, and she absolutely loved it, it felt really special.

She'd been worried stiff at the thought of buying decent presents on her limited budget for people she didn't from a row of houses and it had been all very well for Charles to keep writing that she wasn't to worry about it, as if that was going to help, she couldn't just turn up empty handed. Just one more good reason why she'd been really reluctant to go in the first place. Buying for Sam was a doddle, the Lego Charles' mum had said about made it easy if a bit bleeding expensive, more than she'd reckoned on paying anyhow, but buying the real stuff and not the knock off from the market was eye wateringly dear. Charles' mum and dad were a whole different ball bag, an even bigger nightmare until he'd eventually rescued her for his dad, but only after she got more and more mad at him because he wasn't being any help at all so he wrote that his dad was a golf fanatic so some golf tees or something, but it meant that she could buy this book about so-called golfing legends, old blokes she'd never even heard of, but the book was a bargain and anyhow it weren't like she could think of anything else. His mum was even worse so she'd ended up buying a silk scarf thing which was very pretty if pretty bloody boring, on top of being pretty bloody expensive, still, she couldn't come up with anything else for her either, she had no clue what to buy for a middle-aged woman she didn't even know. She just had this feeling that a box of chocolates or tin of biscuits weren't quite right somehow.

But what the fuck she was gonna buy Charles for no money was beyond her, until she'd had this brainwave, well that's what it'd felt like at the time, even if it was worrying her to death now until she saw his face and then Sam's when he'd insisted that his dad put it on immediately. The apron that she'd bought with the 'rude ish' pole dancer type picture, together with the spangled nipple tassels hanging off had Sam in hysterics, but together with the big thick barbecue cook book and the IOU of cookery lessons it had actually gone down really well, better than she could have dreamed of in fact. Even if she'd had an unlimited amount of money, she couldn't think what the hell she could have bought for him, he seemed to have just about everything, and what he hadn't got, he could easily just go out and buy.

Charles kept apologising for a lack of imagination when he'd given her his present, whispering that he'd make it up to her as soon as he could, before giving her a Tablet, saying that he wanted to be able to see her on Skype wherever he was. Bill immediately accused him of being a sad stalker and of wanting to check up and keep his beady eyes on her, seemingly oblivious to the somewhat strained nature of the laughter that greeted his comment, until Margaret, who was very aware of how tactless and inappropriate he was being to insinuate that Charles couldn't trust her, shot him a furious "Bill" together with a 'shut up, you're not in the least bit funny' glare. She picked up the Robert Plant CD that Charles had given Molly, saying that she loved the 'Please Read the Letter' track especially when Charles sang it and trying to change the subject, asked Molly if she'd heard him sing, so that she nodded and he went slightly pink as they locked eyes for a moment, both lost in a memory. It was the first that Molly had heard that Robert Plant used to be in Led Zeppelin, which made her giggle, she wanted to tell Charles that if he'd said, she'd have known who he was that evening in the kitchen, she'd heard of them before.

-OG-

"Are you cheating, Scamp?"

"NO" Sam screamed his denial indignantly at his father's perfectly justified question, Sam was employing just about every underhand manoeuvre that Molly had taught him "I'm just doing it the way Molly showed me and you're losing Daddy"

"Yes, I know and that's what I meant" Charles laughed "And don't yell, you'll wake her up"

"Is she going to be asleep much longer? Only I want her to play as well"

"What, you expect me to play with both of you cheating?"

"Oi, I heard that"

Actually she'd been awake for some time, had only dropped off for a few minutes after the huge lunch which she'd sort of helped Margaret prepare, well, she'd peeled mountains of stuff, and had then had a couple or three glasses of wine and settled back into the comfort of the sofa where she'd been dozing while Charles and Bill washed up. Margaret and Bill had disappeared somewhere, she presumed for a nap, but she'd been luxuriating in the quiet cosiness of the room, the crackling of logs and the lights on the tree twinkling and … Charles sitting on the floor with his back against the sofa a matter of inches away from her as he played cards with Sam.

It was all so different to the noisy chaos of Christmas that she was used to. By this time of the afternoon her dad would be ratted, her Nan as well most likely or would be fast off and sending them home, and mum would be worn out with cooking and clearing up and refereeing fights between over-tired and fractious kids. And for a moment Molly missed it all, or at least she thought she did, as she arched her back and stretched like a cat taking the opportunity of putting her hand out and touching him, running the back of her fingers lightly from the nape of his neck all the way down his back loving the way he moved his shoulders towards her hand as she did it.

She gave herself a little mental shake, for a moment when she'd first opened her eyes and put her hand out to touch him, it had felt like they were the 'family' that he'd talked about the night before, hindsight made it feel a bit wrong now that she hadn't said what he'd wanted to hear, and she sort of regretted that she'd been far too scared to allow herself to really believe in any of it.

"Sorry, did we wake you?"

He twisted round and put a hand on the sofa cushion levering himself up slightly so that he could lean over and kiss the tip of her nose before sitting back down ready to pretend that he believed in Sam's innocent expression as he told his dad that he'd shuffled the cards before he'd dealt them.

"Nah, weren't asleep"

"Weren't you? Thought you were" He laughed "Who was that snoring then?"

"Molly wasn't snoring Daddy" Sam sounded extremely puzzled as he looked quizzically at his father "I didn't hear her"

"Okaaaaay" Charles pulled a rueful face as he glanced over his shoulder and grinned, about to tell Sam that he'd been teasing, then decided not to attempt any sort of explanation at all putting a hand out ready to steady her as she swung her legs to the floor and struggled up to her feet clutching her phone.

"I'm gonna go to the loo and then I'm gonna ring me mum, are we still on for tomorrow?"

"Of course" He turned a big lamp so that the room was bathed in soft light "Wish her a Merry Christmas from me"

Belinda was in the kitchen when Molly got through, telling her eldest daughter that she was sick of the sight of them all so was hiding with a bottle of Baileys, something that had become a bit of a tradition for the two of them when they'd finished clearing up after Christmas dinner, and that she missed her. Molly giggled as she suggested that her mum missed her because the two of them always got a bit pissed on the stuff Christmas Day, neither of them would dream of drinking it at any other time, so that Belinda agreed that it wasn't the same without one of them saying 'go on, one more won't hurt you' and it certainly wasn't the same saying it to herself. Their conversation was its usual mixture of snippy sarcasm and affectionate teasing, coupled with real concern for each other's well-being until Molly mentioned that she was planning on coming home the following day …. and was intending to think bring Charles with her.

"Can you leave it till the day after or even the day after that, Molls?" Belinda sounded awkward and uncomfortable at putting her daughter off but was even more so at the thought of them coming the following day "Or do you need to get out of there, is that what it is?"

"Nah, that's not it, but why don't you want me to come home tomorrow Mum? Thought you'd want to see me, and it's not like Charles hasn't been before, is it? I thought you liked him"

"Course I do 'n I am looking forward to seeing you, don't be daft you know it's not that, it's just that I wanna, you know, sort stuff a bit before he comes 'ere again, clear up 'n get rid of your Nan for starters, she can't bloody be trusted can she?"

"Nah there is that, I s'pose" Molly tried to giggle, but was deeply disappointed, she hadn't realised until that moment just how much she'd been looking forward to seeing them the following day "Okay, where is she now anyway?"

"Snoring on the couch, keeping yer Dad company, he's snoring in the chair"

"Bloody hell, but honest Mum, you don't need to clear up before we come, I mean, it's just me 'n Charles innit?"

"I know I don't need to, but I want to, okay?"

Belinda was beginning to sound defensive but to say that Molly understood was an exaggeration, she badly wanted to see her mother but she supposed she could sort of see where she was coming from. That short visit he'd made before he went off to Kenya had left Belinda all churned up and twitchy about the way the place had looked, the mess which didn't even appear on her radar normally. By the time Molly had got back upstairs from seeing him off, her face awash with tears and snot because he'd gone, her Mum had been walking backwards and forwards picking things up and putting them down again, just occasionally putting them away if she could find a place to put them. She'd been muttering aloud about how bloody hard it was when no-one else cared about living in Steptoe's yard.

-OG-

They played team Trivial Pursuit, a children's version of the board game that Sam had been given so that Molly had been grabbed by Bill to be his partner as Charles and Sam played together, Margaret insisted that she was just going to watch after getting the tea ready, that she was useless at this sort of thing and wouldn't be able to answer any questions because she wouldn't be able to remember any trivia even if her life depended on it. As she protested at Charles attempts to persuade her to play, Molly suddenly knew who Margaret reminded her of, she didn't look like her, she was much smaller and a bit, well, fatter and she wasn't all snobby and superior or nothing but she sounded exactly the same as that Penelope Whatsits who was in those old things on tele, the snooty one in that Good Life thing.

It was a bit disconcerting for Molly to find that children's version or not, she couldn't answer any of the bleeding questions and those that she did try 'n answer she got wrong so that she began to ask herself whose bloody idea it'd been. Every time she looked up and across the board she caught Charles' eye and forgot all about how stupid she felt as she basked in the look on his face, the way his brown eyes were all soft and warm and crinkling at the edges as he smiled at her, giving her the occasional wink so that she had this … feeling that right at that moment she didn't give a shit about whether he was right or wrong about them, it simply didn't matter anymore, all she wanted was for the rest of the world to go away so that she could kiss him.

"Oi, have you corrupted him?"

Charles was laughing as Sammie, worried that Molly might be upset that she kept getting the answers wrong had started trying to help her out, hoping that his dad wouldn't notice him reading the answers from the backs of the cards in a stage whisper.

"Nah, that's not cheating, that's being kind that's all, we don't cheat do we, Sammie?"

"No not much, remind me never to play 'Strip Poker' with you"

"What's that Daddy?"

Sam was still giggling from Molly's comment about whether or not the two of them cheated.

"Go on, get out of that one"

Bill's dry comment had the adults looking hastily back at the board and pretending to be fascinated by the progress of the game, which team Sam eventually won by a country mile so that they stopped playing, much to Molly's relief, she'd begun to wish she'd done a Margaret and sat out. Fun though it had been, in parts, she couldn't help feeling incredibly stupid at her lack of general knowledge, the only topics she knew anything about at all were Harry Potter and reality T.V., so it would seem that the average eight year old knew more than she did about just about everything.

-OG-

It was when they got into bed, both yawning till their eyes were watering as the early start caught up with them and they snuggled down together, arms round each other and an almost tacit agreement that they were too totally knackered for any sort of sexual marathon that she realised that this was the first day they'd been together that had been a completely, utterly, totally Rebecca-free zone. She presumed that Sam had spoken to her at some point in the day and to his other grandparents as well, but he hadn't done it in front of her so that just for once, and maybe just for the one day, she'd been able to totally ignore the other woman's existence. It was ironic that they hadn't spent half the evening talking about her and here they were getting ready to just go to sleep.

Except that now that they were in bed in the chilly room things had changed and desire was getting in the way of sleep as far as she was concerned. There had been this undercurrent the whole evening so that every time she'd looked at him their eyes had met and she hadn't wanted to look away, any more than he had, he'd made her heart race and her pulse thump. It had been very warm in the room as she'd sat on his lap watching some old film with Bill and Margaret watching as well, although to say that Molly was watching would be a vast exaggeration. She was just drifting, curled up in his lap in a sleepy daydream and doing her best to ignore the explosion of lust that was building in her as she waited for it to be time to go on up to his fridge of a bedroom, get into bed and cuddle up, and probably go to sleep.

Now, it was different. Her hand was curled against his naked bum and she began to stroke gently as his lips started to kiss a trail down to her collar bones and then her breasts.

"I thought you were too tired"

"Nah, thought you was" Her fingers traced down the small of his back as she wriggled to get even closer, encouraging him to get as close to her as he possibly could.

"Nope"

Afterwards it felt as though she'd taken some happy pill or had been skipping through some fairy dust or something as she felt him smile into her neck, his naked skin slippery against hers so that as he moved he sent fresh waves of heat through her, making her tighten all her muscles to try and stop him from moving away. He looked up, a slightly vulnerable expression on his face as he smoothed stray strands of her hair back behind her ears before whispering "You are absolutely totally bloody amazing, you know that don't you?"

"Yeah, nearly as bloody amazing as you" She reached up and kissed him on the cheek "I really love you, you know"

"I'm bloody glad to hear it, things you've just done to me" He moved his head quickly away at an angle as she said 'Oi' and tried to slap him "I love you too, Molly Dawes"

They fell asleep almost immediately, legs entwined, bodies close together, still touching, but despite the early start and the long day which had been undeniably fun, Molly didn't sleep well. It seemed to her as though she woke every hour or so, and each time she woke she woke with a start from a troubled dream, not entirely sure what had woken her but struggling to remember what it was she'd been dreaming about that had made her feel anxious, before the feeling of being safe and secure in arms that tightened around her allowed her to drift back to sleep.

-OG-

"I promise, I won't forget my manners, I won't swear or fart or grope you in front of them so now can you please stop worrying"

"I'm not worrying" She pulled a face "Alright I am a bit, but I'm worried about what they'll do, not you"

The traffic had been very light on the motorway but it was a lot more congested as they arrived in the outskirts of London so that Charles was having to pay close attention to the roads, although he was slightly distracted and a bit irritated at the way she was turning her phone over and over in her hands. She was betraying a degree of tension that he was sure she wasn't even aware of so that she jumped violently when his phone began to ring, the ring tone very strident in the quiet of the car.

"Oh fuck" Charles disconnected the phone from hands free and pulled to the side of the road so he could concentrate on the call "Oh, fuuuucck"

-OG-


	25. Chapter 25

It had been three long days since it all went so spectacularly to shit and right now she was supposed to be in some hotel room getting all glammed up, doing her hair, putting slap on her gob, covering her feet with blister plasters before tottering out the door in killer heels, wearing a dress that she hadn't bought yet, which was just as well in the circumstances. He'd begged, cajoled and pretended to plead for her to go with him to the New Year's bash in the Officers' Mess, and when she'd said she couldn't because she'd got nothing to wear he'd said that the dress she'd worn Christmas was perfect, even though she knew it wasn't, but that it didn't matter anyway because he was proud of her whatever and that she'd look beautiful in a bin bag.

As far as she could see the only answer now was to go out and get roaring drunk, totally plastered, slaughtered, so that the only thing that remained was for her to pick the lucky person who was going to get to go with her.

"We are going to feel shittin' horrible in the morning"

Julie, a girl who'd worked with her in the nursey when she was a temp and who might well end up a soul mate, was also reluctantly single so that she was the ideal choice, even if she had rapidly become catastrophically pissed. Her speech was badly slurred and she was almost cross eyed as she tried to focus before giggling and throwing another Tequila down her throat, unfortunately missing her mouth a bit so that half if it went down the front of her top "Oops"

She wiped her chin with her hand and pulled her shirt away from her body, looking ruefully at the splashes "You will you mean"

"Don't really care, feel horrible already and no work tomorrow is there? I can just lie there and watch Jeremy Kyle, try 'n work out how people can eat their dinners with no teeth"

"Thought you'd be with lover boy, being New Year 'n that, you stopped with him over Christmas, didn't you?" Julie frowned at her and this time did go completely cross-eyed "Shit, does that mean he was friggin' useless?"

"Nah … I mean, yeah, I did stop with him but …. he weren't, he was pretty bloody good as it happens" Molly frowned as she thought hard, then took another large gulp of her Vodka, she wasn't hammered enough to go onto Tequila yet, she was still sober enough, just, to remember that Tequila slammers weren't the best for keeping her chaste"WE was pretty bloody good, I were magic" She thought for a long moment and then pulled a horrified face "Shit, maybe I was rubbish"

"Is that what happened then? Is that why you're 'ere with me having a quiet little drink?"

"Is that what we're doing?" Molly started giggling "Nah, weren't that, his bleeding wife happened"

"Shit, Got a bleeding wife? He's MARRIED?"

Molly shook her head and then wished she hadn't as the room swung round violently "No, not so as you'd notice, except that, well, you know what? I'm not sure, I dunno"

"What, he's a scum bag? Sounds like a scum bag sort of thing" Julie waved an index finger in Molly's face and nodded her head vigorously so that she almost fell off her stool.

"Nah he's not, it's a bit awkward, that's all, look Jules … ne'er mind about him, it's over, he's history, 'n I'm giving up blokes, I'm gonna concentrate on me career instead"

"Your WHAT?" Julie laughed with total incredulity, to say that she was cynical about their chosen occupation was understating things "Hey, Molls?" She frowned, a puzzled expression on her face "Wonder how they managed before? You know, when it didn't matter how horny you got you weren't allowed to check out his bits unless you married him, might have been too late then? Tricky or what?"

"Yeah" Molly was giggling again "But it was a bit different then wasn't it? Tequila weren't invented"

-OG-

They hadn't made it to east Ham the day after Boxing Day, in fact they hadn't made it to anything they'd planned, because events had overtaken them and once again everything in her life was fucked. A two minute phone call from Surrey Police had changed everything.

They'd had to make a U-turn because an accident on the M3 meant that for the last two hours Sam had been in the care of a policewoman at Farnborough Police Station while they'd been trying to trace him, to get his phone number or his address or even his full name because the only information they'd been able to get from a shocked little boy was that his daddy was a soldier, and as they were so close to Aldershot they'd assumed that they should start looking there. Charles immediately reverted to stern army Captain as he'd barked out a volley of questions but couldn't quite hide the shocked panic in his voice as he attempted to find out what the hell had happened. He was met with an extremely phlegmatic voice telling him that they would give him details when he got there, but that not to worry, Sam had been checked and was fine, completely unhurt, just needed collecting. His enquiry about Rebecca's well-being and whereabouts had been met with a degree of obfuscation, the policeman he was talking to either couldn't or didn't want to tell him anything over the phone, they just wanted him to go and collect Sam.

-OG-

The following couple of hours had been the stuff of nightmares as far as Molly was concerned, Charles had been drumming his fingers on the steering wheel in frustrated impatience at every small delay, muttering under his breath at every car turning right and at every red traffic light and then driving too fast on the motorway as Molly obeyed her impulse and told him to calm the fuck down, that he was going to have an accident and kill them both if he didn't bleeding well watch it, a comment that led to him taking a sharp breath and shooting her an infuriated glance.

She had ended up sitting alone in a foyer waiting. He'd disappeared up the stairs with some copper leaving her listening to the hustle and bustle of people coming and going through swing doors, backwards and forwards and calling out to each other and at phones that were ringing with no-one answering them and no-one taking a blind bit of notice of her as she sat on a plastic chair which was bolted to the floor, probably to stop someone hurling it at them to get them to shut up.

She'd just looked up at the clock for the umpteenth time and wondered whether it was moving so slowly because it actually wasn't working when he re-appeared, arms round the shoulders of the mop-haired little boy who screamed her name when he caught sight of her and launched himself across the floor towards the arms that had opened wide to welcome him.

"What's happened?" Molly frowned at Charles, trying to whisper before looking down at the little boy who had his arms wound tightly round her waist with his face buried in her stomach "Where is she?"

"Tell you later, let's get him home"

-OG-

Back in Bath with Margaret and Bill, not to mention Charles and her all fussing round him, Sam perked up no end considering that the last he'd seen of his mum was a traffic policeman inviting her to sit in the back of his car and blow into his machine while they waited for an ambulance to deal with the driver of the other car that she'd ploughed into on the slip road off the M3. Apparently a doctor had checked Sammie over and then a _nice_ police lady had let him wear her hat and play with her torch and pepper spray and radio and stuff while she fed him fizzy drinks and chocolate biscuits in the canteen as they waited together for Charles to show up, the only thing he'd said when his father had arrived to collect him had been "You were a very, very LONG time, Daddy".

Apparently Rebecca was now under arrest at the same police station, she had been more than twice the legal drink/drive limit, and no-one was sure yet how badly hurt the other driver was, but she'd got away without a scratch on her although breath tests were apparently compulsory in accidents these days. To say Charles was pissed at her would be an understatement. He was incandescent with rage, well, coldly bloody furious anyhow, but had kept on saying that he'd warned her, had told everyone that he was concerned, and that she'd risked Sam's life and for that she could rot in there for all he cared, but he'd then had to admit that he was the one who was organising a solicitor for her because her parents had pushed off to France that morning and there was no-one else.

Molly was now the one who was swamped with angry disbelief so she'd kissed Sam goodbye and then Charles did what she asked and dropped her at the station before he set off back to Farnborough. She'd told him in no uncertain terms that she had to get home to get herself ready for starting her new job, but actually it was because she was desperate to get away, she wasn't prepared to go on playing second fiddle to Rebecca and pretending that it was okay, it didn't matter how many texts he sent, which he did, or messages he left on her voicemail, which he also did, she didn't want to let him talk her round. When it came down to it she knew what she'd really known all along, that all the things he'd said to her about love 'n about the future 'n that, were only words.

It was over.

-OG-

"Thank fuck it's Friday, what you doing later?" Julie suddenly nudged her so hard that she almost sent her flying "Get a load of that will you" She nodded in the direction of the door to the lobby "Do you know him? He's a new one on me"

"Oh shit, God, shit, fuck"

Molly looked up from the pile of dressing up clothes she was checking for damp patches as soon as Julie nudged her, and now wished that she hadn't, he was the last person on earth that she'd expected to see on a wet Friday afternoon at the end of a very long week. She straightened up and sniffed suspiciously at her grubby hands before running them over her hair, smoothing the loose strands back from her face and wished that at least a tiny smidgeon of make-up had survived the day, and that she was wearing something nicer than her most faded and ratty old jeans which weren't improved by the dried wee stain on one leg that she'd got courtesy of putting one of the kids on her lap without checking their knickers first. She had a feeling that she was minging.

"How did you find me?"

She was surprised to hear how calm she sounded after walking across the room on wobbly legs to where he was standing. She had this massive sense of deja vue, this was not the first time they'd had this exact same conversation although she couldn't say with any certainty when she'd said it before "What do you want Charles?"

"Your mum told me, and you owe me"

"You've been to see Mum?" She closed her eyes with dismay as he nodded, then shook her head "What you talkin' 'bout? I don't owe you anything"

"I've got a bit of paper here says different" He smiled, doing his level best to look confident and comfortable, his smile making her stomach do a back flip as he rubbed his hand through the curls on the back of his neck, the tell-tale gesture that said it didn't matter how sure of himself he appeared, he wasn't entirely convinced of his welcome "I've got an IOU, you promised me some cookery lessons"

"Barbecue cooking, s'not barbecue weather, is it?"

"Doesn't say that here" He scrutinised the piece of paper again, or pretended to "Nope, just says cooking" He folded it and put it carefully back in his pocket, a tentative grin appearing on his face as he looked at her "Your mum said you were working till six" He looked at his watch "So have you finished yet? Can I buy you a cup of creosote?"

-OG-

"Sorry, think I stink a bit, one of the little buggers peed on me"

"Lovely, wondered what the smell was"

"Shut up"

They'd walked in silence side by side without touching to the café around the corner from the nursery, Molly was incredibly aware of how tall he was and how small and insignificant she felt walking next to him and how badly she wanted to hold his hand. It reminded her of when they'd walked at Stonehenge, the rain was as heavy as it had been that day, it was making the pavements look greasy in the glare of the street lights, but today it was cold as well.

"Tea?"

"Thanks"

Molly looked around, she'd only been in there once before in the six weeks she'd worked in the area, her budget didn't even run to a cup of tea in a shit hole like this one. It was unbelievably difficult to manage on her tiny salary cheque, what with fares and housekeeping and the rest, it actually made Simon look like Lord Bountiful. She still hadn't done anything about finding a second job, her heart wasn't in it somehow, even if the need was pressing "How's Sammie?"

"He's good" He looked down and stirred the cup of milky coffee which he had no intention of drinking "Keeps asking when he's going to see you"

"That's not fair sayin' that" She wanted to accuse him of trying to emotionally blackmail her, but stopped herself in time, that'd suggest he was trying to get her back which was a bit of wishful thinking if ever she'd done any "You haven't told him then? Explained"

"Nope, sorry that was a bit unfair, but I keep hoping things will change" He looked down again at the sludge coloured liquid "I really fucked up this time, didn't I? Told you I was good at that" He shrugged "First of all I was in this tearing bloody rush to get some sort of, I don't know exactly what I thought I was doing, but all I achieved was to send you running for the hills, and then I let myself get sucked into the fucking nightmare that's my ex-wife and I can't blame you for not wanting to put up with that"

"How is she?"

"No idea, she's not exactly thrilled with me, I've seen a solicitor" He snorted a laugh and then looked up from where he had been mindlessly stirring the coffee "Decided it was time I got some proper joint custody arrangement in place, put a stop to all the bloody nonsense and it means I can stop her having a free reign to do whatever she feels like doing ….." He shrugged, biting his bottom lip.

"Drinking?"

"Don't think I can stop that, but she's about to lose her licence, so at least there'll be no drinking and driving for a bit, and I can make sure I have Sam fifty percent of the time, which is apparently the best I can hope for"

As he was talking she kept wanting to pinch herself, she'd missed him so badly, even though it had been the right thing for her to do at the time, she couldn't have just gone on as they were, with her living on some fairground ride, but sometimes in the middle of all the nights when she couldn't sleep, she'd begun to tell herself that she'd been totally wrong to walk away the way she had. That she'd massively over-reacted, should just ring him and tell him that she'd been wrong and how sorry she was, and maybe then this clever, funny, gorgeous bloke who turned her legs to blancmange and made it hard for her to even think straight might, if she was really, really lucky, might just possibly give them another go.

"What is it you want Charles? Why are you here?"

"I miss you, Sam misses you, Mum and Dad miss you, my mum keeps telling me I'm a moron" He looked up brown eyes beseeching her "I came to ask you, well to see, if there's any possibility of a chance, at all, that we can start again … please"

Molly could feel the smirk as it spread across her face, it was full of sheer relief and a mixture of all sorts of emotions, happiness, disbelief, longing "Okay"

"Okay? Is that it? God, don't get too enthusiastic will you?" He was now smirking as much as she was before putting his head back and laughing out loud so that heads turned, looking in their direction "Shall we go?"

"Aren't you gonna drink that?"

"Nope, think I'll give it a miss" He pulled a face at the tepid sludge sitting in front of him in a thick white mug "Where are we going, shall we find a TraveLodge?"

"Nah, need to go home so I can get changed" She waved her hand in the direction of her jeans "You can meet me Nan and the rest, you didn't already do that without me, did you?"

"No"

They stood on the pavement outside, both of them oblivious to the cold and to the pouring rain as he wrapped his arms round her and pulled her body into his, putting one hand on the nape of her neck before leaning in and kissing her, a breathless kiss that was full of longing. He rested his forehead against hers "Are you absolutely sure you wouldn't rather find a TraveLodge?"

-OG-

 _ **Epilogue**_

"No Daddy you're doing that all wrong, that's not how Molly said"

"Really? Thought it was"

They were in the back garden of their rented house in Salisbury, the garden was fairly small but just about big enough for a barbecue and Sam was self-appointed foreman keeping a beady eye on Charles' technique for cooking sticky chicken wings. It was a beautiful warm afternoon, the sun was still blazing from a cloudless blue sky as Molly sat on a garden chair, not one of the horrible white metal ones like before, she'd insisted on some comfortable rattan things with cushions, and now watched and smiled, giggling at Sam's bossiness. Charles turned to look at her and winked, so that she blew him a kiss making him leave the barbecue, tongs still in hand, and lope across the patio to kiss the tip of her nose before walking backwards to the job in hand, almost tripping over Sam who'd decided to stand right behind him.

"Careful"

Molly took another photograph of him waving the tongs around and wearing the lap dancer apron, she'd earlier threatened that she could use them as blackmail material, saying she could give copies to 2 Section if he stepped out of line.

They'd been living here for four months with Molly only coming down for weekends initially, until Rebecca decided to kick up rough about sharing custody, decided that she'd try to prove that Molly was an unsuitable person to be around Sam, by threatening to drag up all the shit that had gone on before Molly had even known them.

She hadn't been privy to the meetings that had gone on with the solicitors and all, but had offered to move in with him much earlier than she'd planned if it helped him prove they were a proper family. He'd been armed with that, together with the evidence of Rebecca's relationship with booze and Molly knew that this time he wouldn't hesitate to bring up her behaving like a bit of a slag if he had to, but he didn't, because in the end the threat was enough and Rebecca saw sense, backed right off.

Initially Molly had been really upset at having to leave the nursery behind, she'd grown to love it and the kids, but she loved him more and after a few weeks of pretending that everything was fine had found her dream job in a Family Centre on the base. It was a sort of nursery and all-age facility for a great big mix of kids, some of them handicapped, or challenged as they called it, mentally as well as physically and she absolutely loved every single minute of it, not least because Charles was so proud of her.

"Here" He handed her a plate of chicken wings and watched with dismay when she took her knife and dissected them "What are you doing?"

"Just checking"

-OG-

 _ **A/N: Hope you enjoyed this, please let me know. Have been given permission to be an addict today to shut me up from moaning, because, believe it or not that bl**dy crown, the new one that I suffered to have fitted a few weeks ago, fell off last night, so I now look like a refugee from Jeremy Kyle and will have to go to the dentist tomorrow if I can get an appointment, but at the moment am having nightmares that he'll be away on holiday or something …. What a bl**dy waste of time and money, not to mention angst, having the old one replaced!**_


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